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CALIBAN'S 
GUIDE  TO  LETTERS 


LAMBKIN'S  REMAINS 


H.  BELLOC 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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lnttp://www.arcliive.org/details/aftermatliorgleanOObell 


THE   AFTERMATH 


m°  OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS 

"The  student  could  desire  nothing  better  than  this  wonder- 
fully compact  little  guide,  which  seems  to  us  to  say  the  last 
word  upon  the  matter  of  modern  journalism.  It  is  written, 
moreover,  in  a  weighty  redundant  style,  which  is  in  itself 
a  most  valuable  object-lesson  to  the  beginner  and  a  model 
of  all  that  contemporary  letters  should  be." — Tfie  Journalist. 

(The  organ  of  the  Trade.) 

"...  very  repetitive  and  tiresome  stuff  .  .  ." — Mr. 
Amadecs  (a  notorious  liar,  writing  in  The  World  of  the 
Pen). 

"...  Admirable  .  .  .  most  admirable  .  .  .  one  of  the 
most  charming  works  which  have  appeared  in  the  English 
language  .  .  .  quite  admirable  ...  so  admirable  that  we 
remember  nothing  like  it  since  Powell's  criticism  on  Charles 
Lamb,  or  rather  Lamb's  Immortal  reply  to  that  criticism  .  ,  . 
quite  admirable." — The   Chesterfield  Mercury. 

"...  This  is  a  book  which  those  who  take  it  up  will 
not  willingly  lay  down,  and  those  who  lay  it  down  will  not 
wiUingly  take  up.  .  .  ." — The  Rev.  Charles  Broylk,  writing 
in  Culture. 

"...  How  is  it  that  England,   even  in  her   decline,   can 

turn  out  such  stuff  as  this?     What  other  nation  could  have 

produced   it    in   the   moment   of   her    agony?     The   Common 

Tongue  still  holds  by  its  very  roughness.  .   .  ." — The  Notion. 

(The  principal  organ  of  well-bred  men 

in  New  York,  U.S.A.) 


THE    AFTERMATH 

Or,    gleanings   FROM    A    BUSY 

LIFE,    CALLED    UPON  THE    OUTER    COVER 
FOR   PURPOSES    OF   SALE 

CALIBAN'S    GUIDE    TO    LETTERS 

LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

BY 

H.    BELLOC 


NEW    YORK 

E.    P.    DUTTON    AND    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


PRINTED    IK    GREAT    BRITAIN    BY 
BILLING   AND   SONS,    LTD  ,    GUILDFORD    AND    ESHEK 


^y 


a- 


T34 


TO 

CATHERINE,    MRS.    CALIBAN, 

BUT     FOR     WHOSE     FRUITFUL    SUGGESTION,    EVER     READY 

SYMPATHY,  POWERS   OF  OBSERVATION,  KINDLY  CRITICISM, 

UNFLINCHING   COURAGE,  CATHOLIC  LEARNING,  AND   NONE 

THE    LESS    CHRISTIAN     PRINCIPLE, 

THIS  BOOK  MIGHT  AS  WELL  NOT  HAVE  BEEN  WRITTEN; 
IT  IS  DEDICATED 

BY 

HER     OBEDIENT     AND     GRATEFUL     SERVANT     AND 
FRIEND     IN     AFFLICTION, 

THE   AUTHOR 


"  O,  Mati;  with  what  tremors  as  of  earth-begettings  hast 
thou  not  wrought,  O,  Man'. — Yet — is  it  utterly  indeed  of 
thee — ?  Did  there  not  toil  in  it  also  that  World-Man,  or 
hafly  was  there  not  Some  Other?  ...  O,  Man!  knowest 
thou  that  word  Some  Other?'" — Carlyle's  "  Frederick  the 
Great." 


207884 


Most  of  these  sketches  are  reprinted  from  "The 
Speaker,"  and  appear  in  this  form  by  the  kind  per- 
mission of  its  Editor. 


ERRATA  AND   ADDENDA 

p.  19,  line  14  (from  the  top),  for  "  enteric  "  read  "  esoteric." 

P.    73,   second   footnote,   for   "  Sophia,   Lady   Gowl,"    read 
"  Lady  Sophia  Gowl." 

P.  277  (line  5  from  bottom),  for  "  the  charming  prospect  of 
such  a  bribe j''^  read  "  Bride.'^ 

P.  456,  delete  all  references  to  Black-mail,  passim. 

P.  510      (line     6     from     top),      for      "  Chou-fleiir,''^      read 
"  Chauffeur.''^ 


Direction  to  Printer. — Please  print  hard,  strong,  clear, 
straight,  neat,  clean,  and  well.  Try  and  avoid  those  little 
black  smudges  ! 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

PREFACE           -                 .                 ,  -  ,  ix 

INTRODUCTION                -                 -  -  -  II 

I.    REVIEWING      -                  -                 -  -  -  23 

II.    ON    POLITICAL   APPEALS             -  -  *  37 

III.  THE   SHORT   STORY      -  -  -  "57 

IV.  THE   SHORT   LYRIC       -                -  -  -  69 
V.    THE    INTERVIEW            -                 -  -  -  84 

VI.    THE    PERSONAL   PAR    -                 -  -  -  lOO 

VII.    THE    TOPOGRAPHICAL   ARTICLE  -  -  I06 

VIII.    ON    EDITING   -                 -                 -  -  -  1 14 

IX.    ON    REVELATIONS          -                 -  -  -  122 

X.    SPECIAL   PROSE               -                 -  -  -  1 38 

APPENDIX  : 

PRICES    CURRENT    -                 -  -  -  145 

NOTE   ON    TITLES    -                 -  -  -  148 

NOTE    ON    STYLE      -                 -  -  .  149 

THE   ODE     -                 -                 -  -  -  152 

ON    REMAINDERS    AND    PULPING        -  -  156 


m-  FURTHER  AND   YET  MORE    WEIGHTY 
OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS 

"...  We  found  it  very  tedious.  .  .  ." — T/ie  Evening 
German. 

(The  devil  "we"  did!  "We"  was  once  a  private  in  a 
line  regiment,  drummed  out  for  receiving  stolen  goods.) 

"...  We  cannot  see  what  Dr.  Caliban's  Guide  is  driving 
at." — The  Daily  American. 

(It  is  driving  at  you.) 

"...  What?     Again?   .   .   ." — The  Edinburgh  Review. 

"...  On  y  retrouve  a  chaque  page  I'orgueil  et  la  secheresse 
Anglaise.  .  .  ." — M.  Hyppolite  Durand^  writing  in  Le 
Journal  of  Paris. 

"  .  .  .  O  Angleterre  !  He  merveilleuse  !  C'est  done 
toujours  de  toi  que  sortiront  la  Justice  et  la  Verite.  .  .  ." — 
M.  Charmant  Reinach,  writing  in  the  Horreur  of  Geneva. 

"...  Lasciate  ogni  speranza  voi  ch'entrate." — Signor  Y. 
Ilabrimo  (of  Palermo),  writing  in  the  Tribuna  of  Rome. 

"  TToXXa  rh,  Seiva  KovSev  dvOpuwov  Seivbrepov  tt Aet.  " — M.  Negri- 
DEPOPOULOS  DE  WoRMS,  Writing  in  The  "t6  Setvov" ot  Athens. 

"   !  !  SkB^O  " — The  Banner  of  Israel. 

" V—The  Times  of  London. 


PREFACE 

This  work  needs  no  apology. 

Its  value  to  the  English-speaking  world  is  twofold. 
It  preserves  for  all  time,  in  the  form  of  a  printed 
book,  what  might  have  been  scattered  in  the  sheets  of 
ephemeral  publications.  It  is  so  designed  that  these 
isolated  monuments  of  prose  and  verse  can  be  studied, 
absorbed,  and,  if  necessary,  copied  by  the  young 
aspirant  to  literary  honours. 

Nothing  is  Good  save  the  Useful,  and  it  would  have 
been  sheer  vanity  to  have  published  so  small  a  selection, 
whatever  its  merit,  unless  it  could  be  made  to  do  Some- 
thing, to  achieve  a  Result  in  this  strenuous  modern 
world.  It  will  not  be  the  fault  of  the  book,  but  of  the 
reader,  if  no  creative  impulse  follows  its  perusal,  and 
the  student  will  have  but  himself  to  blame  if,  with  such 
standards  before  him,  and  so  lucid  and  thorough  an 
analysis  of  modern  Literature  and  of  its  well-springs, 
he  does  not  attain  the  goal  to  which  the  author  would 
lead  him. 

The  book  will  be  found  conveniently  divided  into 
sections  representing  the  principal  divisions  of  modern 
literary  activity ;  each  section  will  contain  an  intro- 
ductory essay,  which  will  form  a  practical  guide  to  the 
subject  with  which  it  deals,  and  each  will  be  adorned 


X  PREFACE 

with  one  or  more  examples  of  the  finished  article,  which, 
if  the  instructions  be  carefully  followed,  should  soon 
be  turned  out  without  difficulty  by  any  earnest  and 
industrious  scholar  of  average  ability. 

If  the  Work  can  raise  the  income  of  but  one  poor 
journalist,  or  produce  earnings,  no  matter  how  insig- 
nificant, for  but  one  of  that  great  army  which  is  now 
compelled  to  pay  for  the  insertion  of  its  compositions 
in  the  newspapers  and  magazines,  the  labour  and 
organizing  ability  devoted  to  it  will  not  have  been  in 
vain. 


THE   AFTERMATH 


OR 


GLEANINGS    FROM    A    BUSY    LIFE 
INTRODUCTION 

A    GRATEFUL    SKETCH    OF    THE    AUTHOR's    FRIEND    (iN 
PART  THE  PRODUCER  OF  THIS   BOOk),  JAMES  CALIBAN 

Few  men  have  pursued  more  honourably,  more  usefully, 
or  more  successfully  the  career  of  letters  than  Thomas 
Caliban,  D.D.,  of  Winchelthorpe-on-Sea,  near  Ports- 
mouth. Inheriting,  as  his  name  would  imply,  the  grand 
old  Huguenot  strain,  his  father  was  a  Merchant  Taylor 
of  the  City  of  London,  and  principal  manager  of  the 
Anglo-Chilian  Bank;  his  mother  the  fifth  daughter  of 
K.  Muller,  Esq.,  of  Brighton,  a  furniture  dealer  and 
reformer  of  note  in  the  early  forties. 

The  connection  established  between  my  own  family 
and  that  of  Dr.  Caliban  I  purposely  pass  over  as  not 
germane  to  the  ensuing  pages,  remarking  only  that  the 
friendship,  guidance,  and  intimacy  of  such  a  man  will 
ever  count  among  my  chiefest  treasures.  Of  him  it 
may  truly  be  written:  ^'^  He  maketh  them  to  shine  like 
Sharon;  the  waters  are  his  in  Ram-Shaid,  and  Gilgath 
fraiseth  him.^' 

II 


12  THE   AFTERMATH 

I  could  fill  a  volume  of  far  greater  contents  than  has 
this  with  the  mere  record  of  his  every-day  acts  during 
the  course  of  his  long  and  active  career.  I  must  content 
myself,  in  this  sketch,  with  a  bare  summary  of  his 
habitual  deportment.  He  would  rise  in  the  morning, 
and  after  a  simple  but  orderly  toilet  would  proceed  to 
family  prayers,  terminating  the  same  with  a  hymn,  of 
which  he  would  himself  read  each  verse  in  turn,  to  be 
subsequently  chanted  by  the  assembled  household.  To 
this  succeeded  breakfast,  which  commonly  consisted  of 
ham,  eggs,  coffee,  tea,  toast,  jam,  and  what-not — in  a 
word,  the  appurtenances  of  a  decent  table. 

Breakfast  over,  he  would  light  a  pipe  (for  he  did  not 
regard  indulgence  in  the  weed  as  immoral,  still  less  as 
un-Christian :  the  subtle  w^ord  eVtetKeia,  which  he 
translated  "sweet  reasonableness,"  was  painted  above 
his  study  door — it  might  have  served  for  the  motto  of 
his  whole  life),  he  would  light  a  pipe,  I  say,  and  walk 
round  his  garden,  or,  if  it  rained,  visit  the  plants  in  his 
conservatory. 

Before  ten  he  would  be  in  his  study,  seated  at  a 
large  mahogany  bureau,  formerly  the  property  of  Sir, 
Charles  Henby,  of  North-chapel,  and  noon  would  still 
find  him  there,  writing  in  his  regular  and  legible  hand 
the  notes  and  manuscripts  which  have  made  him  famous, 
or  poring  over  an  encyclopaedia,  the  more  conscientiously 
to  review  some  book  with  which  he  had  been  entrusted. 

After  the  hours  so  spent,  it  was  his  habit  to  take  a 
turn  in  the  fresh  air,  sometimes  speaking  to  the  gar- 
dener, and  making  the  round  of  the  beds ;  at  others 
passing  by  the  stables  to  visit  his  pony  Bluebell,  or 
to   pat   upon   the   head   his   faithful   dog   Ponto,   now 


INTRODUCTION  13 

advanced   in   years   and   suffering   somewhat   from   the 
mange. 

To  this  light  exercise  succeeded  luncheon,  for  him  the 
most  cheerful  meal  of  the  day.  It  was  then  that  his 
liveliest  conversation  was  heard,  his  closest  friends 
entertained  :  the  government,  the  misfortunes  of  foreign 
nations,  the  success  of  our  fiscal  policy,  our  maritime 
supremacy,  the  definition  of  the  word  "gentleman," 
occasionally  even  a  little  bout  of  theology — a  thousand 
subjects  fell  into  the  province  of  his  genial  criticism  and 
extensive  information ;  to  each  his  sound  judgment  and 
ready  apprehension  added  some  new  light ;  nor  were  the 
ladies  of  the  family  incompetent  to  follow  the  gifted 
table  talk  of  their  father,  husband,  brother,  master,* 
and  host,  t 

Until  the  last  few  years  the  hour  after  lunch  waai 
occupied  with  a  stroll  upon  the  terrace,  but  latterly  he 
would  consume  it  before  the  fire  in  sleep,  from  which 
the  servants  had  orders  to  wake  him  by  three  o'clock. 
At  this  hour  he  would  take  his  hat  and  stick  and 
proceed  into  the  town,  where  his  sunny  smile  and 
friendly  salute  were  familiar  to  high  and  low.  A  visit 
to  the  L.N.C.  School,  a  few  purchases,  perhaps  even 
a  call  upon  the  vicar  (for  Dr.  Caliban  was  without 
prejudice — the  broadest  of  men),  would  be  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  afternoon,  from  which  he  returned  to  tea  in 
the  charming  drawing-room  of  48,  Henderson  Avenue. 

It  was  now  high  time  to  revisit  his  study.     He  was 

*  The  governess  invariably  took  her  meals  with  the  family. 

t  Miss  Bowley,  though  practically  permanently  resident 
in  the  family,  was  still  but  a  guest — a  position  which  she 
never  forgot,  though  Dr.  Caliban  forbad  a  direct  allusion  to 
the  fact. 


14  THE  AFTERMATH 

at  work  by  six,  and  would  write  steadily  till  seven. 
Dinner,  the  pleasant  conversation  that  succeeds  it  in 
our  English  homes,  perhaps  an  innocent  round  game, 
occupied  the  evening  till  a  gong  for  prayers  announced 
the  termination  of  the  day.  Dr.  Caliban  made  it  a 
point  to  remain  the  last  up,  to  bolt  the  front  door,  to 
pour  out  his  own  whiskey,  and  to  light  his  own  candle 
before  retiring.  It  was  consonant  with  his  exact  and 
thoughtful  nature,  by  the  way,  to  have  this  candle  of  a 
patent  sort,  pierced  down  the  middle  to  minimi.se  the 
danger  from  falling  grease;  it  was  moreover  surrounded 
by  a  detachable  cylinder  of  glass.* 

Such  was  the  round  of  method  which,  day  by  day 
and  week  by  week,  built  up  the  years  of  Dr.  Caliban's 
life;  but  life  is  made  up  of  little  things,  and,  to  quote 
a  fine  phrase  of  his  own  :  "  It  is  the  hourly  habits  of 
a  man  that  build  up  his  character."  He  also  said  (in 
his  address  to  the  I.  C.  B.  Y.) :  "  Show  me  a  man 
hour  by  hour  in  his  own  home,  from  the  rising  of  the 
sun  to  his  going  down,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  manner 
of  man  he  is."  I  have  always  remembered  the  epigram, 
and  have  acted  upon  it  in  the  endeavour  to  portray  the 
inner  nature  of  its  gifted  author. 

I  .should,  however,  be  giving  but  an  insufficient  picture 
of  Dr.  Caliban  were  I  to  leave  the  reader  with  no 
further  impression  of  his  life  work,  or  indeed  of  the 
causes  which  have  produced  this  book. 

His  father  had  left  him  a  decent  competence.  He 
lay,  therefore,  under  no  necessity  to  toil  for  his  living. 
Nevertheless,  that  sense  of  duty,   "  through  which  the 

*  Such  as  are  sold  and  patented  by  my  friend  Mr.  Gape- 
thotn,  of  362,  Fetter  Lane. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

eternal  heavens  are  fresh  and  strong  "  (Wordsworth), 
moved  him  to  something  more  than  "  the  consumption 
of  the  fruits  of  the  earth"  (Horace).  He  preached 
vokmtarily  and  without  remuneration  for  some  years  to 
the  churches  in  Cheltenham,  and  having  married  Miss 
Bignor,  of  Winchelthorpe-on-Sea,  purchased  a  villa  in 
that  rising  southern  watering-place,  and  received  a  call 
to  the  congregation,  which  he  accepted.  He  laboured 
there  till  his  recent  calamity. 

I  hardly  know  where  to  begin  the  recital  of  his 
numerous  activities  in  the  period  of  thirty-five  years 
succeeding  his  marriage.  With  the  pen  he  was  inde- 
fatigable. A  man  more  ttoikiAos — or,  as  he  put  it, 
many-sided — perhaps  never  existed.  There  was  little 
he  would  not  touch,  little  upon  which  he  was  not  con- 
sulted, and  much  in  which,  though  anonymous,  he  was 
yet  a  leader. 

He  wrote  regularly,  in  his  earlier  years,  for  The 
Seventh  Monarchy,  The  Banner,  The  Christian,  The 
Free  Trader,  Household  VJords,  Good  Words,  The 
Quiver,  Chatterbox,  The  Home  Circle,  and  The  Sunday 
Monitor.  During  the  last  twenty  years  his  work  has 
continually  appeared  in  the  Daily  Telegraph,  the  Times, 
the  Siecle,  and  the  Trihuna.  In  the  last  two  his  work 
was  translated. 

His  political  effect  was  immense,  and  that  though  he 
never  acceded  to  the  repeated  request  that  he  would 
stand  upon  one  side  or  the  other  as  a  candidate  for 
Parliament.  He  remained,  on  the  contrary,  to  the  end 
of  his  career,  no  more  than  president  of  a  local  associa- 
tion. It  was  as  a  speaker,  writer,  and  preacher,  tliat 
his  ideas  spread  outwards ;  thousands  certainly  now  use 


i6  THE  AFTERMATH 

political  phrases  which  they  may  imagine  their  own,  but 
which  undoubtedly  sprang  from  his  creative  brain.  He 
was  perhaps  not  the  first,  but  one  of  the  first,  to  apply 
the  term  "Anglo-Saxon"  to  the  English-speaking  race 
— with  which  indeed  he  was  personally  connected 
through  his  relatives  in  New  Mexico.  The  word 
"  Empire  "  occurs  in  a  sermon  of  his  as  early  as  1869. 
He  was  contemporary  with  Mr.  Lucas,  if  not  before 
him,  in  the  phrase,  ' '  Command  of  the  sea ' '  :  and  I 
find,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Gorch,  written  long  ago  in  1873, 
the  judgment  that  Protection  was  "  no  longer,"  and  the 
nationalisation  of  land  "  not  yet,"  within  "  the  sphere 
of  practical  politics." 

If  his  influence  upon  domestic  politics  was  in  part  due 
to  his  agreement  with  the  bulk  of  his  fellow-citizens,  his 
attitude  in  foreign  afTairs  at  least  was  all  his  own. 
Events  have  proved  it  wonderfully  sound.  A  strenuous 
opponent  of  American  slavery  as  a  very  young  man — 
in  i860 — he  might  be  called,  even  at  that  age,  the  most 
prominent  Abolitionist  in  Worcestershire,  and  worked 
indef atigably  for  the  cause  in  so  far  as  it  concerned  this 
country.  A  just  and  charitable  man,  he  proved,  after 
the  victory  of  the  North,  one  of  the  firmest  supporters 
in  the  press  of  what  he  first  termed  "  an  Anglo-American 
entente."  Yet  he  was  not  for  pressing  matters.  He 
would  leave  the  "gigantic  daughter  of  the  West"  to 
choose  her  hour  and  time,  confident  in  the  wisdom  of 
his  daughter's  judgment,  and  he  lived  to  see,  before  his 
calamity  fell  upon  him,  Mr.  Hanna,  Mr.  Roosevelt, 
Mr.  Elihu  Root,  and  Mr.  Smoot  occupying  the  positions 
they  still  adorn. 

He  comprehended  Europe.    It  was  he  who  prophesied 


INTRODUCTION  17 

of  the  Dual  Monarchy  (I  believe  in  the  Coniemforary 
Revieiv),  that  "the  death  of  Francis  Joseph  would  be 
the  signal  for  a  great  upheaval  " ;  he  that  applied  to 
Italy  the  words  "clericalism  is  the  enemy";  and  he 
that  publicly  advised  the  withdrawal  of  our  national 
investments  from  the  debt  of  Spain — "a  nation  in 
active  decay."  He  cared  not  a  jot  when  his  critics 
pointed  out  that  Spanish  fours  had  risen  since  his 
advice  no  less  than  20  per  cent.,  while  our  own  consols 
had  fallen  by  an  equal  amount.  "  The  kingdom  I 
serve,"  he  finely  answered,  "  knows  nothing  of  the  price 
of  stock."  And  indeed  the  greater  part  of  his  fortune 
was  in  suburban  rents,  saving  a  small  sum  unfortunately 
adventured  in  Shanghai  Telephones. 

Russia  he  hated  as  the  oppressor  of  Finland  and 
Poland,  for  oppression  he  loathed  and  combated 
wherever  it  appeared ;  nor  had  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour  a 
stronger  supporter  than  he  when  that  statesman,  armed 
only  in  the  simple  manliness  of  an  English  Christian 
and  Freeman,  combated  and  destroyed  the  terrorism 
that  stalked  through  Ireland. 

Of  Scandinavia  he  knew  singularly  little,  but  that 
little  was  in  its  favour ;  and  as  for  the  German  Empire, 
his  stanzas  to  Prince  Bismarck,  and  his  sermon  on  the 
Emperor's  recent  visit,  are  too  well  known  to  need  any 
comment  here.  To  Holland  he  was,  until  recently, 
attracted.     Greece  he  despised. 

Nowhere  was  this  fine  temper  of  unflinching  courage 
and  sterling  common  sense  more  apparent  than  in  the 
great  crisis  of  the  Dreyfus  case.  No  man  stood  up 
more  boldly,  or  with  less  thought  of  consequence,  for 
Truth  and  Justice  in  this  country.     He  was  not  indeed 

2 


i8  THE   AFTERMATH 

the  chairman  of  the  great  meeting  in  St.  James'  Hall, 
but  his  peroration  was  the  soul  of  that  vast  assemblage. 
"  England  will  yet  weather  the  storm.  ..."  It  was  a 
true  prophecy,  and  in  a  sense  a  confession  of  Faith. 

There  ran  through  his  character  a  vein  of  something 
steady  and  profound,  which  inspired  all  who  came  near 
him  with  a  sense  of  quiet  persistent  strength.  This, 
with  an  equable,  unfailing  pressure,  restrained  or  con- 
trolled whatever  company  surrounded  him.  It  was  like 
the  regular  current  of  a  full  but  silent  tide,  or  like  the 
consistent  power  of  a  good  helmsman.  It  may  be  called 
his  personal  force.  To  most  men  and  women  of  our 
circle,  that  force  was  a  sustenance  and  a  blessing ;  to 
ill-regulated  or  worldly  men  with  whom  he  might  come 
in  contact,  it  acted  as  a  salutary  irritant,  though  rarely 
to  so  intense  a  degree  as  to  give  rise  to  scenes.  I  must 
unfortunately  except  the  case  of  the  Rural  Dean  of 
Bosham,  whose  notorious  excess  was  the  more  lamentable 
from  the  fact  that  the  Council  of  the  S.P.C.A.  is  strictly 
non-sectarian,  and  whose  excuse  that  the  ink-pot  was 
not  thrown  but  brushed  aside  is,  to  speak  plainly,  a 
tergiversation. 

The  recent  unhappy  war  in  South  Africa  afforded  an 
excellent  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  the  qualities  I 
mean.  He  was  still  active  and  alert ;  still  guiding  men 
and  maidens  during  its  worse  days.  His  tact  was 
admirable.  He  suffered  from  the  acute  divisions  of  his 
congregation,  but  he  suffered  in  powerful  silence ;  and 
throughout  those  dark-days  his  sober  necquid  nimis*  was 
like  a  keel  and  ballast  for  us  all. 

*  Petronius. 


INTRODUCTION  19 

A  young  radical  of  sorts  was  declaiming  at  his  table 
one  evening  against  the  Concentration  Camp.  Dr. 
Caliban  listened  patiently,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
harangue  said  gently,  "  Shall  we  join  the  ladies?"  The 
rebuke  was  not  lost.* 

On  another  occasion,  when  some  foreigner  was  reported 
in  the  papers  as  having  doubted  Mr.  Brodrick's  figures 
relative  to  the  numbers  of  the  enemy  remaining  in  the 
field,  Dr.  Caliban  said  with  quiet  dignity,  "It  is  the 
first  time  I  have  heard  the  word  of  an  English  gentleman 
doubted." 

It  must  not  be  imagined  from  these  lines  that  he 
defended  the  gross  excesses  of  the  London  mob — 
especially  in  the  matter  of  strong  waters — or  that  he 
wholly  approved  of  our  policy.  ''Peace  in  our  time, 
Oh,  LordV^  was  his  constant  cry,  and  against  mili- 
tarism he  thundered  fearlessly.  I  have  heard  him  apply 
to  it  a  word  that  never  passed  his  lips  in  any  other 
connection — the  word  Damnable. 

On  the  details  of  the  war,  the  policy  of  annexation, 
the  advisability  of  frequent  surrenders,  the  high  salaries 
of  irregulars,  and  the  employment  of  national  scouts,  he 
was  silent.  In  fine,  one  might  have  applied  to  him  the 
strong  and  simple  words  of  Lord  Jacobs,  in  his  Guildhall 
speech,  t  One  main  fact  stood  out — he  hated  warfare. 
He  was  a  man  of  peace. 

The  tall,  broad  figure,  inclining  slightly  to  obesity, 
the  clear  blue  northern  eyes,  ever  roaming  from  point  to 
point,  as  though  seeking  for  grace,   the  familiar  soft 

*  The  Ladies  were  Mrs.  Caliban,  Miss  Rachel  and  Miss 
Aletheia  Caliban,  Miss  Bowley,  Miss  Goucher,  and  Lady 
Robinson. 

+  "  It  is  enough  for  me  that  I  am  an  Englishman." 


20  THE   AFTERMATH 

wideawake,  the  long  full  white  beard,  the  veined  com- 
plexion and  dark-gloved  hands,  are  now,  alas,  removed 
from  the  sphere  they  so  long  adorned. 

Dr.  Caliban's  affliction  was  first  noticed  by  his  family 
at  dinner  on  the  first  of  last  September — a  date  which 
fell  by  a  strange  and  unhappy  coincidence  on  a  Sunday. 
P'or  some  days  past  Miss  Goucher  had  remarked  his 
increasing  volubility ;  but  on  this  fatal  evening,  in  spite 
of  all  the  efforts  of  his  wife  and  daughters,  he  continued 
to  speak,  without  interruption,  from  half -past  seven  to 
a  quarter-past  nine ;  and  again,  after  a  short  interval, 
till  midnight,  when  he  fell  into  an  uneasy  sleep,  itself 
full  of  mutterings.  His  talk  had  seemed  now  a  sermon, 
now  the  reminiscence  of  some  leading  article,  now  a 
monologue,  but  the  whole  quite  incoherent,  thougl\ 
delivered  with  passionate  energy  ;  nor  was  it  the  least 
distressing  feature  of  his  malady  that  he  would  tolerate 
no  reply,  nay,  even  the  gentlest  assent  drove  him  into 
paroxysms  of  fury. 

Next  day  he  began  again  in  the  manner  of  a  debate  at 
the  IcK'al  Liberal  Club,  soon  lapsing  again  into  a  sermon, 
and  anon  admitting  snatches  of  strange  songs  into  the 
flow  of  his  words.  Towards  eleven  he  was  apparently, 
arguing  with  imaginary  foreigners,  and  shortly  after- 
wards the  terrible  scene  was  ended  by  the  arrival  of  a 
medical  man  of  his  own  persuasion. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  Dr.  Caliban  will  ever  be  able 
to  leave  Dr.  Charlbury's  establishment,  but  all  that  can 
be  done  for  him  in  his  present  condition  is  lovingly  and 
ungrudgingly  afforded.  There  has  even  been  provided 
for  him  at  considerable  expense,  and  after  an  exhaustive 
search,  a  companion  whose  persistent  hallucination  it  is 


INTRODUCTION  21 

that  he  is  acting  as  private  secretary  to  some  leader  of 
the  Opposition,  and  the  poor  wild  soul  is  at  rest. 

Such  was  the  man  who  continually  urged  upon  me  the 
necessity  of  compiling  some  such  work  as  that  which 
now-  lies  before  the  reader.  He  had  himself  intended  to 
produce  a  similar  volume,  and  had  he  done  so  I  should 
never  have  dared  to  enter  the  same  field ;  but  I  feel  that 
in  his  present  incapacity  I  am,  as  it  were,  fulfilling  a 
duty  when  I  trace  in  these  few  pages  the  plan  which  he 
so  constantly  counselled,  and  with  such  a  man  counsels 
were  commands.  If  I  may  be  permitted  to  dwell  upon 
the  feature  more  especially  his  own  in  this  Guide,  I  will 
point  to  the  section  "  On  Vivid  Historical  Literature  in 
its  Application  to  Modern  Problems,"  and  furthermore, 
to  the  section  "On  the  Criticism  and  Distinction  of 
Works  Attributed  to  Classical  Authors."  In  the  latter 
case  the  examples  chosen  were  taken  from  his  own  large 
collection ;  for  it  was  a  hobby  of  his  to  purchase  as 
bargains  manuscripts  and  anonymous  pamphlets  which 
seemed  to  him  to  betray  the  hand  of  some  master. 
Though  I  have  been  compelled  to  differ  from  my  friend, 
and  cannot  conscientiously  attribute  the  specimens  I 
have  chosen  to  William  Shakespeare  or  to  Dean  Swift, 
yet  I  am  sure  the  reader  will  agree  with  me  that  the 
error  into  which  Dr.  Caliban  fell  was  that  of  no  ordinary 
mind. 

Finally,  let  me  offer  to  his  family,  and  to  his 
numerous  circle,  such  apologies  as  may  be  necessary  for 
the  differences  in  style,  and,  alas,  I  fear,  sometimes  in 
mode  of  thought,  between  the  examples  which  I  have 
cho.sen  as  models  for  the  student  and  those  which  perhaps 
would  have  more  powerfully  attracted  the  sympathies  of 


22  THE  AFTERMATH 

my  preceptor  himself.  I  am  well  aware  that  such  a 
difference  is  occasionally  to  be  discovered.  I  can  only 
plead  in  excuse  that  men  are  made  in  very  different 
ways,  and  that  the  disciple  cannot,  even  if  he  would, 
forbid  himself  a  certain  measure  of  self-development. 
Dr.  Caliban's  own  sound  and  broad  ethics  would  surely 
have  demanded  it  of  no  one,  and  I  trust  that  this  solemn 
reference  to  his  charity  and  genial  toleration  will  put  an 
end  to  the  covert  attacks  which  some  of  those  who  should 
have  l)een  the  strongest  links  between  us  have  seen  fit  to 
make  in  the  provincial  and  religious  press. 


1 

REVIEWING 

The  ancient  and  honourable  art  of  Reviewing  is,  with- 
out question,  the  most  important  branch  of  that  great 
calling  which  we  term  the  "  Career  of  Letters." 

As  it  is  the  most  important,  so  also  it  is  the  first  which 
a  man  of  letters  should  learn.  It  is  at  once  his  shield 
and  his  weapon.  A  thorough  knowledge  of  Reviewing, 
both  theoretical  and  applied,  will  give  a  man  more 
popularity  or  power  than  he  could  have  attained  by  the 
expenditure  of  a  corresponding  energy  in  any  one  of 
the  liberal  professions,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Municipal  politics. 

It  forms,  moreover,  the  foundation  upon  which  all 
other  literary  work  may  be  said  to  repose.  Involving, 
as  it  does,  the  reading  of  a  vast  number  of  volumes,  and 
the  thorough  mastery  of  a  hundred  wholly  different 
subjects ;  training  one  to  rapid,  conclusive  judgment,  and 
to  the  exercise  of  a  kind  of  immediate  power  of  survey, 
it  vies  with  cricket  in  forming  the  character  of  an 
Englishman.  It  is  interesting  to  know  that  Charles 
Hawbuck  was  for  some  years  principally  occupied  in 
Reviewing ;  and  to  this  day  some  of  our  most  important 
men  will  write,  nay,  and  sign,  reviews,  as  the  press  of 
the  country  testifies  upon  every  side. 

It   is  true  that   the   sums  paid   for  this   species  of 
literary  activity  are  not  large,  and  it  is  this  fact  which 

*3 


24  THE   AFTERMATH 

has  dissuaded  some  of  our  most  famous  novelists  and 
poets  of  recent  years  from  undertaking  Reviewing  of  any 
kind.  But  the  beginner  will  not  be  deterred  by  such  a 
consideration,  and  he  may  look  forward,  by  way  of 
compensation,  to  the  ultimate  possession  of  a  large  and 
extremely  varied  library,  the  accumulation  of  the  books 
which  have  been  given  him  to  review.  I  have  myself 
been  presented  with  books  of  which  individual  volumes 
were  sometimes  worth  as  much  as  forty-two  shillings 
to  buy. 

Having  said  so  much  of  the  advantages  of  this  initial 
and  fundamental  kind  of  writing,  I  will  proceed  to  a 
more  exact  account  of  its  dangers  and  difficulties,  and 
of  the  processes  inherent  to  its  manufacture. 

It  is  clear,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  Reviewer  must 
regard  herself  as  the  servant  of  the  public,  and  of  her 
employer;  and  service,  as  I  need  hardly  remind  her  (or 
him),  has  nothing  in  it  dishonourable.  We  were  all 
made  to  work,  and  often  the  highest  in  the  land  are  the 
hardest  workers  of  all.  This  character  of  service,  of 
which  Mr.  Ruskin  has  written  such  noble  things,  will 
often  lay  the  Reviewer  under  the  necessity  of  a  sharp 
change  of  opinion,  and  nowhere  is  the  art  a  better 
training  in  morals  and  application  than  in  the  habit  it 
inculcates  of  rapid  and  exact  obedience,  coupled  with 
the  power  of  seeing  every  aspect  of  a  thing,  and  of 
insisting  upon  that  particular  aspect  which  will  give 
most  satisfaction  to  the  commonwealth. 

It  may  not  be  uninstructive  if  I  quote  here  the 
adventures  of  one  of  the  truest  of  the  many  stout- 
hearted men  I  have  known,  one  indeed  who  recently 
died    in    harness    reviewing    Mr.    Garcke's    article    on 


REVIEWING  25 

Electrical  Traction  in  the  supplementary  volumes  of 
the  Encyclofadia  Britannica.  This  gentleman  was  once 
sent  a  book  to  review ;  the  subject,  as  he  had  received 
no  special  training  in  it,  might  have  deterred  one  less 
bound  by  the  sense  of  duty.  This  book  was  called  Tlie 
Snail :  Its  Habitat,  Food,  Customs,  Virtues,  Vices,  and 
Future.  It  was,  as  its  title  would  imply,  a  monograph 
upon  snails,  and  there  were  many  fine  coloured  prints, 
showing  various  snails  occupied  in  feeding  on  the  leaves 
proper  to  each  species.  It  also  contained  a  large  number 
of  process  blocks,  showing  sections,  plans,  elevations, 
and  portraits  of  snails,  as  well  as  detailed  descriptions 
(with  diagrams)  of  the  ears,  tongues,  eyes,  hair,  and 
nerves  of  snails.  It  was  a  comprehensive  and  remark- 
able work. 

Aly  friend  (whose  name  I  suppress  for  family  reasons) 
would  not  naturally  have  cared  to  review  this  book. 
He  saw  that  it  involved  the  assumption  of  a  knowledge 
which  he  did  not  possess,  and  that  some  parts  of  the 
book  might  require  very  close  reading.  It  numbered  in 
all  1,532  pages,  but  this  was  including  the  index  and 
the  preface. 

He  put  his  inclinations  to  one  side,  and  took  the  book 
with  him  to  the  office  of  the  newspaper  from  which  he 
had  received  it,  where  he  was  relieved  to  hear  the  Editor 
inform  him  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  review  the  work 
in  any  great  detail.  "  Moreover,"  he  added,  "  I  don't 
think  you  need  praise  it  too  much." 

On  hearing  this,  the  Reviewer,  having  noted  down 
the  price  of  the  book  and  the  name  of  the  publisher, 
wrote  the  following  words — which,  by  the  way,  the 
student  will  do  well  to  cut  out  and  pin  upon  his  wall, 


26  THE   AFTERMATH 

as  an  excellent  example  of  what  a  "short  notice" 
should  be  : 

"The  Snail:    Its   Habitat,    etc.     Adam   Charles.     Pschuffer. 
2IS.  6d. 

"  This  is  a  book  that  will  hardly  add  to  the  reputation  of 
its  author.     There  is  evidence  of  detailed  work,  and  even  of 
conscientious  research  in  several  places,  but  the  author  has 
ignored  or  misunderstood  the  whole  teaching  of 
and  the  special  discoveries  of  and  what  is 

even  more  remarkable  in  a  man  of  Mr.  Charles'  standing,  he 
advances  views  which  were  already  exploded  in  the  days 
of 

He  then  took  an  Encyclopaedia  and  filled  up  the 
blanks  with  the  names  of  three  great  men  who  appeared, 
according  to  that  work,  to  be  the  leaders  in  this  branch 
of  natural  history.  His  duty  thus  thoroughly  accom- 
plished and  his  mind  at  rest,  he  posted  his  review,  and 
applied  himself  to  lighter  occupations. 

Next  day,  however,  the  Editor  telephoned  to  him,  to 
the  effect  that  the  notice  upon  which  he  had  spent  so 
much  labour  could  not  be  used. 

"  We  have  just  received,"  said  the  Editor,  "a  page 
advertisement  from  Pschuffer.  I  would  like  a  really 
good  article,  and  you  might  use  the  book  as  a  kind  of 
peg  on  which  to  hang  it.  You  might  begin  on  the  subject 
of  snails,  and  make  it  something  more  like  your  '  Oh ! 
?ny  lost  friend,'  which  has  had  such  a  success." 

On  occasions  such  as  these  the  beginner  must 
remember  to  keep  full  possession  of  himself. 

Nothing  in  this  mortal  life  is  permanent,  and  the 
changes  that  are  native  to  the  journalistic  career  are 
perhaps  the  most  startling  and  frequent  of  all  those 
which  threaten  humanity. 


REVIEWING  27 

The  Reviewer  of  whom  I  speak  was  as  wise  as  he 
was  honourable.  He  saw  at  once  what  was  needed.  He 
Avrote  another  and  much  longer  article,  beginning — 

"  The  Snail:   Its   Habitat,    etc.     Adam    Charles.     Pschuffer. 
21S.  6d. 

"  There  are  tender  days  just  before  the  Spring  dares  the 
adventure  of  the  Channel,  when  our  Kentish  woods  are 
prescient,  as  it  were,  of  the  South.     It  is  calm  .  .  ." 

and  so  forth,  leading  gradually  up  to  snails,  and  bring- 
ing in  the  book  here  and  there  about  every  twentieth 
line. 

When  this  long  article  was  done,  he  took  it  back  to 
the  office,  and  there  found  the  Editor  in  yet  a  third 
mood.  He  was  talking  into  the  telephone,  and  begged 
his  visitor  to  wait  until  he  had  done.  My  friend,  there- 
fore, took  up  a  copy  of  the  Spectator,  and  attempted  to 
distract  his  attention  with  the  masterful  irony  and  hard 
crystalline  prose  of  that  paper. 

Soon  the  Editor  turned  to  him  and  said  that 
Pschuffers  had  just  let  him  know  by  telephone  that 
they  would  not  advertise  after  all. 

It  was  now  necessary  to  delete  all  that  there  might  be 
upon  snails  in  his  article,  to  head  the  remainder  "My 
Kentish  Home, ' '  and  to  send  it  immediately  to  ' '  Life 
in  the  Open."  This  done,  he  sat  down  and  wrote  upon 
a  scrap  of  paper  in  the  office  the  following  revised 
notice,  which  the  Editor  glanced  at  and  approved  : 

'•  The   Snail:    Its  Habitat,    etc.     Adam   Charles.     Pschuffer. 
218.  6d. 
"  This    work    will,    perhaps,    appeal    to    specialists.     This 
journal  does  not  profess  any  capacity  of  dealing  with  it,  but 


»a  THE  AFTERMATH 

a  glance  at  its  pages  is  sufficient  to  show  that  it  would  be 
very  ill-suited  to  ordinary  readers.  The  illustrations  are  not 
without  merit." 

Next  morning  he  was  somewhat  perturbed  to  be  called 
up  again  upon  the  telephone  by  the  Editor,  who  spoke 
to  him  as  follows  : 

"  I  am  very  sorry,  but  I  have  just  learnt  a  most 
important  fact.  Adam  Charles  is  standing  in  our 
interests  at  Biggleton.  Lord  Bailey  will  be  on  the  plat- 
form. You  must  write  a  long  and  favourable  review 
of  the  book  before  twelve  to-day,  and  do  try  and  say  a 
little  about  the  author." 

He  somewhat  wearily  took  up  a  sheet  of  paper  and 
wrote  what  follows  : — a  passage  which  I  must  again 
recommend  to  the  student  as  a  very  admirable  specimen 
of  work  upon  these  lines. 

"  The   Snail:    Its  Habitat,    etc.     Adam    Charles.     Pschuffer. 
21S.  6d. 

"  This  book  comes  at  a  most  opportune  moment.  It  is 
not  generally  known  that  Professor  Charles  was  the  first  to 
point  out  the  very  great  importance  of  the  training  of  the 
mind  in  the  education  of  children.  It  was  in  May,  1875, 
that  he  made  this  point  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who 
was  so  impressed  by  the  mingled  enlightenment  and  novelty 
of  the  view,  that  he  wrote  a  long  and  interesting  postcard 
upon  the  ajuthor  to  a  friend  of  the  present  writer.  Professor 
Charles  may  be  styled— nay,  he  styles  himself— a  '  self-made 
man.'  Born  in  Huddersfield  of  parents  who  were  weavers 
in  that  charming  northern  city,  he  was  early  fascinated  by 
the  study  of  natural  science,  and  was  admitted  to  the 
Alexandrovna  University.  ..." 

(And  so  on,  and  so  on,  out  of  "  Who's  Who.'') 

"  But  this  would  not  suffice  for  his  growing  genius." 


REVIEWING  29 

(And  so  on,  and  so  on,  out  of  the  Series  of  Contemporary 
Agnostics.) 

"  ...  It  is  sometimes  remarkable  to  men  of  less  wide 
experience  how  such  spirits  find  the  mere  time  to  achieve 
their  prodigious  results.  Take,  for  example,  this  book  on 
the  Snail.  .  .  ." 

And  he  continued  in  a  fine  spirit  of  praise,  such  as 
should  be  given  to  books  of  this  weight  and  importance, 
and  to  men  such  as  he  who  had  written  it.  He  sent  it 
by  boy -messenger  to  the  office. 

The  messenger  had  but  just  left  the  house  when  the 
telephone  rang  again,  and  once  more  it  was  the  Editor, 
who  asked  whether  the  review  had  been  sent  off.  Know- 
ing how  dilatory  are  the  run  of  journalists,  my  friend 
felt  some  natural  pride  in  replying  that  he  had  indeed 
just  despatched  the  article.  The  Editor,  as  luck  would 
have  it,  was  somewhat  annoyed  by  this,  and  the  reason 
soon  appeared  when  he  proceeded  to  say  that  the  author 
was  another  Charles  after  all,  and  not  the  Mr.  Charles 
who  was  standing  for  Parliament.  He  asked  whether 
the  original  review  could  still  be  retained,  in  which  the 
book,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been  treated  with 
some  severity. 

My  friend  permitted  himself  to  give  a  deep  sigh,  but 
was  courteous  enough  to  answer  as  follows  : 

"  I  am  afraid  it  has  been  destroyed,  but  I  shall  be 
very  happy  to  write  another,  and  I  will  make  it  really 
scathing.    You  shall  have  it  by  twelve." 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  the  review 
(which  many  of  you  must  have  read)  took  this  final 
form,  which  I  recommend  even  more  heartily  than  any 


30  THE   AFTERMATH 

of  the  others  to  those  who  may  peruse  these  pages  for 
their  profit,  as  well  as  for  their  instruction. 

'■'■The  Snail:  lis  Habitat,  etc.  Adam  Charles.  Pschuffer. 
2IS.  6d. 
"  We  desire  to  have  as  little  to  do  with  this  book  as  possible, 
amd  we  should  recommend  some  similar  attitude  to  our 
readers.  It  professes  to  be  scientific,  but  the  harm  books 
of  this  kind  do  is  incalculable.  It  is  certainly  unfit  for 
ordinary  reading,  and  for  our  part  we  will  confess  that  we 
have  not  read  more  than  the  first  few  words.  They  were 
quite  sufl&cient  to  confirm  the  judgment  which  we  have  put 
before  our  readers,  and  they  would  have  formed  sufficient 
material  for  a  lengthier  treatment  had  we  thought  it  our 
duty  as  Englishmen  to  dwell  further  upon  the  subject." 

Let  me  now  turn  from  the  light  parenthesis  of 
illuminating  anecdote  to  the  sterner  part  of  my 
task. 

We  will  begin  at  the  beginning,  taking  the  simplest 
form  of  review,  and  tracing  the  process  of  production 
through  its  various  stages. 

It  is  necessary  first  to  procure  a  few  forms,  such  as 
are  sold  by  Messrs.  Chatsworthy  in  Chancery  Lane,  and 
Messrs.  Goldman,  of  the  Haymarket,  in  which  all  the 
skeleton  of  a  review  is  provided,  with  blanks  left  for 
those  portions  which  must,  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  vary  according  to  the  book  and  the  author  under 
consideration.  There  are  a  large  number  of  these  forms, 
and  I  would  recommend  the  student  who  is  as  yet  quite 
a  novice  in  the  trade  to  select  some  forty  of  the  most 
conventional,  such  as  these  on  page  7  of  the  catalogue  : 

"  Mr.  has  hardly  seized  the  pure  beauty  of  " 

"  We  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  in  his  estimate  of  " 

"  Again,  how  admirable  is  the  following  :" 


REVIEWING 


31 


There  is  some- 
what of  the 


-'s  style." 
-'s 

-'s 


At  the  same  establishments  can  be  procured  very 
complete  lists  of  startling  words,  which  lend  individu- 
ality and  force  to  the  judgment  of  the  Reviewer. 
Indeed  I  believe  that  Mr.  Goldman  was  himself  the 
original  patentee  of  these  useful  little  aids,  and  among 
many  before  me  at  this  moment  I  would  recommend  the 
following  to  the  student  : 

Absolute  \ 

Immediate 
Creative 
Bestial 
Intense 

Authoritative        in  Mr. 
Ampitheatrical    )     jNIrs. 
Lapsed  Miss  ■ 

Miggerlish 
Japhetic 
Accidental 
Alkaline 
^  Zenotic 

Messrs.  Mailing,  of  Duke  Street,  Soho,  sell  a  par- 
ticular kind  of  cartridge  paper  and  some  special  pins, 
gum,  and  a  knife,  called  "The  Reviewer's  Outfit." 
I  do  not  know  that  these  are  necessary,  but  they  cost 
only  a  few  pence,  and  are  certainly  of  advantage  in  the 
final  process.  To  wit :  Seizing  firmly  the  book  to  be 
reviewed,  write  down  the  title,  price,  publisher,  and  (in 
books  other  than  anonymous)  the  author's  name,  at  the 
top  of  the  sheet  of  paper  you  have  chosen.  The  book 
should  then  be  taken  in  both  hands  and  opened  sharply, 
with  a  gesture  not  easily  described,  but  acquired  with 


32  THE  AFTERMATH 

very  little  practice.  The  test  of  success  is  that  the  book 
should  give  a  loud  crack  and  lie  open  of  itself  upon  the 
table  before  one.  This  initial  process  is  technically 
called  "  breaking  the  back  "  of  a  book,  but  we  need  not 
trouble  ourselves  yet  with  technical  terms.  One  of  the 
pages  so  disclosed  should  next  be  torn  out  and  the  word 
' '  extract ' '  written  in  the  corner,  though  not  before  such 
sentences  have  been  deleted  as  will  leave  the  remainder 
a  coherent  paragraph.  In  the  case  of  historical  and 
scientific  work,  the  preface  must  be  torn  out  bodily,  the 
name  of  the  Reviewer  substituted  for  the  word  "I," 
and  the  whole  used  as  a  description  of  the  work  in 
question.  What  remains  is  very  simple.  The  forms, 
extracts,  etc.,  are  trimmed,  pinned,  and  gummed  in 
order  upon  the  cartridge  paper  (in  some  offices  brown 
paper),  and  the  whole  is  sent  to  press. 

1  need  hardly  say  that  only  the  most  elementary  form 
of  review  can  be  constructed  upon  this  model,  but  the 
simplest  notice  contains  all  the  factors  which  enter  into 
the  most  complicated  and  most  serious  of  literary 
criticism  and  pronouncements. 

In  this,  as  in  every  other  .practical  trade,  an  ounce  of 
example  is  worth  a  ton  of  precept,  and  I  have  much 
pleasure  in  laying  before  the  student  one  of  the  best 
examples  that  has  ever  appeared  in  the  weekly  press  of 
how  a  careful,  subtle,  just,  and  yet  tender  review,  may 
be  written.  The  complexity  of  the  situation  which  called 
it  forth,  and  the  lightness  of  touch  required  for  its 
successful  completion,  may  be  gauged  by  the  fact  that 
Mr.  Mayhem  was  the  nephew  of  my  employer,  had 
quarrelled  with  him  at  the  moment  when  the  notice  was 
written,  but  will  almost  certainly  be  on  good  terms  with 


REVIEWING  33 

him  again ;  he  was  also,  as  I  privately  knew,  engaged 
to  the  daughter  of  a  publisher  who  had  shares  in  the 
works  where  the  review  was  printed. 

A   YOUNG    POET    IN    DANGER 
Mr.  Mayhem's  "  Pereant  qui  Nostra." 

We  fear  that  in  "  Pereant  qui  Nostra,"  Mr.  Mayhem  has 
hardly  added  to  his  reputation,  and  we  might  even  doubt 
whether  he  was  well  advised  to  publish  it  at  all.  "  Tufts  in 
an  Orchard  "  gave  such  promise,  that  the  author  of  the  ex- 
quisite lyrics  it  contained  might  easily  have  rested  on  the 
immediate  fame  that  first  effort  procured  him. 

"  Lord,  look  to  England;  England  looks  to  you," 
and — 

"  Great  unaffected  vampires  and  the  moon," 

are  lines  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  will  not  readily  let  die. 

In  "  Pereant  qui  Nostra,"  Mr.  Mayhem  preserves  and  even 
increases  his  old  facility  of  expression,  but  there  is  a  terrible 
falling-off  in  verbal  aptitude. 

What  are  we  to  think  of  "  The  greatest  general  the  world 
has  seen"  applied  as  a  poetic  description  to  Lord  Kitchener? 
Mr.  Mayhem  will  excuse  us  if  we  say  that  the  whole  expres- 
sion is  commonplace. 

Commonplace  thought  is  bad  enough,  though  it  is  difficult 
to  avoid  when  one  tackles  a  great  national  subject,  and  thinks 
what  all  good  patriots  and  men  of  sense  think  also.  "  Pour 
etre  poete,"  as  M.  Yves  Guyot  proudly  said  in  his  receptional 
address  to  the  French  Academy,  "  Pour  etre  poete  on  n'est 
pas  forcement  alien6."  But  commonplace  langttage  should 
always  be  avoidable,  and  it  is  a  fault  which  we  cannot  but 
admit  we  have  found  throughout  Mr.  Mayhem's  new  volume. 
Thus  in  "  Laura  "  he  compares  a  young  goat  to  a  "  tender 
flower,"  and  in  "  Billings  "  he  calls  some  little  children  "  the 
younglings  of  the  flock."  Again,  he  says  of  the  waves  at 
Dover  in  a  gale  that  they  are  "  horses  all  in  rank,  with 
manes  of  snow,"  and  tells  us  in  •'  Eton  College "  that  the 
Thames  "  runs  like  a  silver  thread  amid  the  gieen." 

3 


34  THE  AFTERMATH 

All  these  similes  verge  upon  the  commonplace,  even  when 
they  do  not  touch  it.  However,  there  is  very  genuine  feel- 
ing in  the  description  of  his  old  school,  and  we  have  no 
doubt  that  the  bulk  of  Etonians  will  see  more  in  the  poem 
than  outsiders  can  possibly  do. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  Mr.  Mayhem  has  a  powerful  source 
of  inspiration  in  his  strong  patriotism,  and  the  sonnets 
addressed  to  Mr.  Kruger,  Mr.  O'Brien,  Dr.  Clark,  and 
General  Mercier  are  full  of  vigorous  denunciation.  It  is  the 
more  regrettable  that  he  has  missed  true  poetic  diction  and  lost 
his  subtletly  in  a  misapprehension  of  planes  and  values. 

"  Vile,  vile  old  man,  and  yet  more  vile  again," 

is  a  line  that  we  are  sure  Mr.  Mayhem  would  reconsider  in 
his  better  moments:  "more  vile"  than  what?  Than  him- 
self ?    The  expression  is  far  too  vague. 

"  Proud  Prelate,"  addressed  to  General  Mercier,  must  be 
a  misprint,  and  it  is  a  pity  it  should  have  slipped  in.  What 
Mr.  Mayhem  probably  meant  was  "Proud  Caesar"  or 
"  soldier,"  or  some  other  dissyllabic  title.  The  word  -prelate 
can  properly  only  be  applied  to  a  bishop,  a  mitred  abbot,  or 
a  vicar  apostolic. 

"  Babbler  of  Hell,  importunate  mad  fiend,  dead  canker, 
crested  worm,"  are  vigorous  and  original,  but  do  not  save 
the  sonnet.     And  as  to  the  last  two  lines, 

"  Nor  seek  to  pierce  the  viewless  shield  of  years, 
For  that  you  certainly  could  never  do," 

Mr.  Mayhem  must  excuse  us  if  we  say  that  the  order  of  the 
lines  make  a  sheer  bathos. 

Perhaps  the  faults  and  the  excellences  of  Mr.  Mayhem, 
his  fruitful  limitations,  and  his  energetic  inspirations,  can 
be  best  appreciated  if  we  quote  the  following  sonnet ;  the 
exercise  will  also  afford  us  the  opportunity  (which  we  are 
sure  Mr.  Mayhem  will  not  resent  in  such  an  old  friend)  of 
pointing  out  the  dangers  into  which  his  new  tendencies  may 
lead  him. 

"  England,  if  ever  it  should  be  thy  fate 
By  fortune's  turn  or  accident  of  chance 
To  fall  from  craven  fears  of  being  great, 
And  in  the  tourpey  with  dishevelled  lance 


REVIEWING  35 

To  topple  headlong,  and  incur  the  Hate 
Of  Spain,  America,  Germany,  and  France, 

^^^lat  will  you  find  upon  that  dreadful  date 
To  ciieck  the  backward  move  of  your  advance? 

A  little  Glory ;  purchased  not  with  gold 

Nor  yet  with  Frankincense  (the  island  blood 

Is  incommensurate,  neither  bought  nor  sold). 
But  on  the  poops  where  Drake  and  Nelson  stood 

An  iron  hand,  a  stern  unflinching  eye 

To  meet  the  large  assaults  of  Destiny." 

Now,  here  is  a  composition  that  not  everyone  could  have 
written.  It  is  inspired  by  a  vigorous  patriotism,  it  strikes 
the  right  note  (Mr.  Mayhem  is  a  Past  Seneschal  of  the  Navy 
League),  and  it  breathes  throughout  the  motive  spirit  of 
our  greatest  lyrics. 

It  is  the  execution  that  is  defective,  and  it  is  to  execution 
that  Mr.  Mayhem  must  direct  himself  if  he  would  rise  to  the 
level  of  his  own  great  conceptions. 

We  will  take  the  sonnet  line  by  line,  and  make  our  mean- 
ing clear,  and  we  do  this  earnestly  for  the  sake  of  a  young 
poet  to  whom  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  owes  much,  and  whom  it 
would  be  deplorable  to  see  failing,  as  Kipling  appears  to  be 
failing,  and  as  Ganzer  has  failed. 

Line  i  is  not  very  striking,  but  might  pass  as  an  intro- 
duction ;  line  2  is  sheer  pleonasm — after  using  the  word 
"fate,"  you  cannot  use  "fortune,"  "accident,"  "chance," 
as  though  they  were  amplifications  of  your  first  thought. 
Moreover,  the  phrase  "  by  fortune's  turn  "  has  a  familiar 
sound.     It  is  rather  an  echo  than  a  creation. 

In  line  3,  "craven  fears  of  being  great"  is  taken  from 
Tennyson.  The  action  is  legitimate  enough.  Thus,  in 
Wordsworth's  "  Excursion "  are  three  lines  taken  bodily 
from  "Paradise  Lost,"  in  Kipling's  "Stow  it"  are  whole 
phrases  taken  from  the  Police  Gazette,  and  in  Mr.  Austin's 
verses  you  may  frequently  find  portions  of  a  Standard  leader. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  licence  which  a  young  poet  should  be 
chary  of.  All  these  others  were  men  of  an  established  reputa- 
tion before  they  permitted  themselves  this  liberty. 

In  line  4,  "dishevelled"  is  a  false  epithet  for  "lance"; 
a  lance  has  no  hair  ;  the  adjective  can  only  properly  be  used 
of  a  woman,  a  wild  beast,  or  domestic  animal. 


56  THE   AFTERMATH 

In  line  5,  "  incur  the  hate"  is  a  thoroughly  unpoetic  phrase 
— we  say  so  unreservedly.  In  line  6,  we  have  one  of  those 
daring  experiments  in  metre  common  to  our  younger  poets ; 
therefore  we  hesitate  to  pronounce  upon  it,  but  (if  we  may 
presume  to  advise)  we  should  give  Mr.  Mayhem  the  sugges- 
tion made  by  the  Tiyjies  to  Tennyson — that  he  should  stick 
to  an  exact  metre  until  he  felt  sure  of  his  style;  and  in  line  8, 
"the  backward  move  of  your  advance"  seems  a  little  strained. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  sextet  that  the  chief  slips  of  the 
sonnet  appear,  and  they  are  so  characteristic  of  the  author's 
later  errors,  that  we  cannot  but  note  them  ;  thus,  "  purchased 
not  with  gold  or  Frankincense  "  is  a  grievous  error.  It  is 
indeed  a  good  habit  to  quote  Biblical  phrases  (a  habit  which 
has  been  the  making  of  half  our  poets),  but  not  to  confuse 
them  :  frankincense  was  never  used  as  coin — even  by  the 
Hittites.  "  Incommensurate  "  is  simply  meaningless.  How 
can  blood  be  "incommensurate"?  We  fear  Mr.  Mayhem 
has  fallen  into  the  error  of  polysyllabic  effect,  a  modern  pit- 
fall. "  Island  blood  "  will,  however,  stir  many  a  responsive 
thriU. 

The  close  of  the  sonnet  is  a  terrible  falling  off.     When  you 

say  a  thing  is  purchased,  "  not  with  this  but "  the  reader 

naturally  expects  an  alternative,  instead  of  which  Mr.  May- 
hem goes  right  off  to  another  subject  !  Also  (though  the 
allusion  to  Nelson  and  Drake  is  magnificent)  the  mention  of 
an  iron  hand  and  an  eye  by  themselves  on  a  poop  seems  to 
us  a  very  violent  metaphor. 

The  last  line  is  bad. 

We  do  not  write  in  this  vein  to  gain  any  reputation  for 
preciosity,  and  still  less  to  offend.  Mr.  Mayhem  has  many 
qualities.  He  has  a  rare  handling  of  penultimates,  much 
potentiality,  large  framing  ;  he  has  a  very  definite  chiaros- 
curo, and  the  tones  are  full  and  objective;  so  are  the  values. 
We  would  not  restrain  a  production  in  which  (as  a  partner 
in  a  publishing  firm)  the  present  writer  is  directly  interested. 
But  we  wish  to  recall  Mr.  Mayhem  to  his  earlier  and  simpler 
style — to  the  "  Cassowary,"  and  the  superb  interrupted 
seventh  of  "  The  Altar  Ghoul." 

England  cannot  afford  to  lose  that  talent. 


II 

ON  POLITICAL  APPEALS 

It  was  one  of  Dr.  Caliban's  chief  characteristics — and 
perhaps  the  main  source  of  his  power  over  others — that 
he  could  crystallise,  or — to  use  the  modern  term — 
"  wankle,"  the  thought  of  his  generation  into  sharp 
unexpected  phrases.  Among  others,  this  was  constantly 
upon  his  lips  : 

"  We  live  in  stirring  times." 

If  I  may  presume  to  add  a  word  to  the  pronounce- 
ments of  my  revered  master,  I  would  rewrite  the 
sentence  thus  : 

"We  live  in  stirring — and  changeful — times." 

It  is  not  only  an  element  of  adventure,  it  is  also  an 
element  of  rapid  and  unexpected  development  which 
marks  our  period,  and  which  incidentally  lends  so  con- 
siderable an  influence  to  genius. 

In  the  older  and  more  settled  order,  political  forces 
were  so  well  known  that  no  description  or  analysis  of 
them  was  necessary  :  to  this  day  members  of  our  more 
ancient  political  families  do  not  read  the  newspapers. 
Soon,  perhaps,  the  national  life  will  have  entered  a  new 
groove,  and  once  more  literary  gentlemen  will  but  in- 
directly control  the  life  of  the  nation. 

For  the  moment,  however,  their  effect  is  direct  and 
37 

207884 


38  THE  AFTERMATH 

immediate.  A  vivid  prophecy,  a  strong  attack  upon 
this  statesman  or  that  foreign  Government  may  deter- 
mine public  opinion  for  a  space  of  over  ten  days,  and 
matter  of  this  sort  is  remunerated  at  the  rate  of  from 
15s.  to  i8s.  6d.  per  thousand  words.  When  we  contrast 
this  with  the  9s.  paid  for  the  translation  of  foreign 
classics,  the  5s.  of  occasional  verse,  or  even  the  los.  of 
police-court  reporting,  it  is  sufficiently  evident  that  this 
kind  of  composition  is  the  Premier  Prose  of  our  time. 

There  must,  indeed,  be  in  London  and  Manchester, 
alive  at  the  present  moment,  at  least  fifty  men  who  can 
command  the  prices  I  have  mentioned,  and  who,  with 
reasonable  industry,  can  earn  as  much  as  ^500  a  year 
by  their  decisions  upon  political  matters.  But  I  should 
be  giving  the  student  very  indifferent  counsel  were  I  to 
recommend  him  for  the  delivery  of  his  judgment  to  the 
beaten  track  of  Leading  Articles  or  to  that  of  specially 
written  and  signed  communications  :  the  sums  paid  for 
such  writing  never  rise  beyond  a  modest  level ;  the 
position  itself  is  precarious.  In  London  alone,  and 
within  a  radius  of  87  yards  from  the  "  Green  Dragon," 
no  less  than  53  Authors  lost  their  livelihood  upon  the 
more  respectable  papers  from  an  inability  to  prophesy 
with  any  kind  of  accuracy  upon  the  late  war,  and  this 
at  a  time  when  the  majority  of  regular  politicians  were 
able  to  retain  their  seats  in  Parliament  and  many 
ministers  their  rank  in  the  Cabinet. 

By  far  the  most  durable,  the  most  exalted,  and  the 
most  effective  kind  of  appeal,  is  that  which  is  made  in 
a  poetic  form,  especially  if  that  form  be  vague  and 
symbolic  in  its  character.  Nothing  is  risked  and  every- 
thing is  gained  by  this  method,  upon  which  have  been 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  39 

founded  so  many  reputations  and  so  many  considerable 
fortunes.  The  student  cannot  be  too  strongly  urged  to 
abandon  the  regular  and  daily  task  of  set  columns — 
signed  or  unsigned — for  the  occasional  Flash  of  Verse 
if  he  desire  to  provoke  great  wars  and  to  increase  his 
income.  It  may  not  always  succeed,  but  the  proportion 
of  failures  is  very  small,  and  at  the  worst  it  is  but  a 
moment's  energy  wasted. 

"  We  are  sick,"  says  one  of  the  most  famous  among 
those  who  have  adopted  this  method,  "  We  are  sick  " — 
he  is  speaking  not  only  of  himself  but  of  others — "  We 
are  sick  for  a  stave  of  the  song  that  our  fathers  sang." 
Turn,  therefore,  to  the  dead — who  are  no  longer  alive, 
and  with  whom  no  quarrel  is  to  be  feared.  Make  them 
reappear  and  lend  weight  to  your  contention.  Their 
fame  is  achieved,  and  may  very  possibly  support  your 
own.  This  kind  of  writing  introduces  all  the  elements 
that  most  profoundly  affect  the  public  :  it  is  mysterious, 
it  is  vague,  it  is  authoritative;  it  is  also  eminently 
literary,  and  I  can  recall  no  first-class  political  appeal 
of  the  last  fifteen  years  which  has  not  been  cast  more  or 
less  upon  these  lines. 

The  subjects  you  may  choose  from  are  numerous  and 
are  daily  increasing,  but  for  the  amateur  the  best, 
without  any  question,  is  that  of  Imperialism.  It  is  a 
common  ground  upon  which  all  meet,  and  upon  which 
every  race  resident  in  the  wealthier  part  of  London  is 
agreed.  Bring  forward  the  great  ghosts  of  the  past,  let 
them  swell  what  is  now  an  all  but  universal  chorus. 
Avoid  the  more  complicated  metres,  hendecasyllables, 
and  the  rest ;  choose  those  which  neither  scan  nor  rhyme ; 
or,  if  their  subtlety  baffles  you,  fall  back  upon  blank 


40  THE  AFTERMATH 

verse,  and  you  should,  with  the  most  moderate  talent, 
lay  the  foundation  of  a  permanent  success. 

I  will  append,  as  is  my  custom,  a  model  upon  which 
the  student  may  shape  his  first  efforts,  though  I  would 
not  have  him  copy  too  faithfully,  lest  certain  idiosyn- 
crasies of  manner  should  betray  the  plagiarism. 

THE  IMPERIALIST  FEAST 

[A  Hall  at  the  Grand  Oriental.     At  a  long  tabic  are 
seated  mmimerable  Shades.      The  walls  are  deco- 
rated with    -flags   of   all   nations,    and   a  hand   of 
musicians  in  sham  uniform  are  flaying  very  loudly 
on  a  dais.] 
Catullus  rises  and  makes  a  short  speech,  pointing  out 
the   advantages   of   Strong   Men,    and   making   several 
delicate   allusions   to   Caesar,    who   is    too   much   of   a 
gentleman  to  applaud.     He  then  gives  them  the  toast 
of  "  Imperialism,"  to  which  there  is  a  hearty  response. 
Lucan  replies  in  a  few  well-chosen  words,  and  they  fall 
to  conversation. 

Petronius  :  I  would  be  crowned  with  paper  flowers 
to-night 
And  scented  with  the  rare  opopanax, 
Whose  savour  leads  the  Orient  in,  suggesting 
The  seas  beyond  Modore. 

Talleyrand  :  Shove  up,  Petronius, 

And  let  me  sit  as  near  as  possible 
To  Mr.  Bingoe's  Grand  Imperial  Band 
With  Thirty-seven  Brazen  Instruments 
And  Kettle-Drums  complete  :  I  hear  the  players 
Discourse  the  music  called  "  What  Ho  !  She  Bumps  !" 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  41 

Lord  Chesterfield  :  What  Ho  !  She  Bumps  !  Like- 
wise !    C'est  5a  !    There's  'Air  ! 

Lord  Glenaltamont  of  Ephesus  {severely) :  Lord 
Chesterfield  !    Be  worthy  of  your  name. 

Lord  Chesterfield  {angrily) :  Lord  Squab,  be  worthy 
of  your  son-in-law's. 

Henry  V.  :  My  Lords  !  My  Lords  1     What  do  you 
with  your  swords  ? 
I  mean,  what  mean  you  by  this  strange  demeanour 
Which  (had  you  swords  and  knew  you  how  to  use  them) 
Might  ...   I  forget  what  I  was  going  to  say.   .   .   . 

Oh  !  Yes Is  this  the  time  for  peers  to  quarrel, 

When  all  the  air  is  thick  with  Agincourt 

And  every  other  night  is  Crispin's  day? 

The  very  supers  bellow  up  and  down. 

Armed  of  rude  cardboard  and  wide  blades  of  tin 

For  England  and  St.  George  ! 

Richard  Yea  and  Nay  :  You  talk  too  much. 

Think  more.     Revise.     Avoid  the  commonplace; 
And  when  you  lack  a  startling  word,  invent  it. 

\^Their  quarrel  is  stopped  by  Thomas  Jefferson  rising 
to  propose  the  toast  of  "  The  Anglo-Saxon  Race.^^^ 

Jefferson  :   If  I  were  asked  what  was  the  noblest 
message 
Delivered  to  the  twentieth  century, 
I  should  reply — 

{Etc.,  etc.     While  he  maunders  on 
Antony,  Cleopatra,  and  C^sar  begin  talking 
rather  loud) 
Cleopatra  :  Waiter  !  I  want  a  little  creme  de  menthe. 
{The  waiter  pays  no  attention.) 


42  THE  AFTERMATH 

Antony  :  Waiter  !    A  glass  of  curagao  and  brandy. 

{Waiter  still  looks  at  Jeferson.) 
CiESAR  :  That  is  the  worst  of  these  contracted  dinners. 
They  give  you  quite  a  feed  for  3s.  6d. 
And  have  a  splendid  Band.     I  like  the  Band, 
It  stuns  the  soul.   .   .   .     But  when  you  call  the  waiter 
He  only  sneers  and  looks  the  other  way. 
Cleopatra  (makes  a  moue). 

C^SAR  {archly) :  Was  that  the  face  that  launched  a 
thousand  ships 
And  sacked  .   .   . 

Antony  {angrily) :  Oh  !  Egypt !  Egypt !  Egypt ! 
Thomas  Jefferson  {ending,  interrufts  the  quarrel). 

.   .   .  blessings 
Of  order,  cleanliness,  and  business  methods. 
The  base  of  Empire  is  a  living  wage. 
One  King    .    .    .    {applause)    .    .    .    {applause)    .    .    . 
.  .  .  {applause)  shall  always  wave 
.   .   .   {applause) 
.  .   .  {loud  applause)  .  .   .  {applause) 

The  Reign  of  Law  ! 
{Thunders  of  applause) 
Napoleon  {rising  to  reply) :   I  am  myself  a  strong 
Imperialist. 
A  brochure,  very  recently  compiled 
(Which,  pardon  me,  I  do  not  mean  to  read). 
Neglects   the   point,    I    think;    the   Anglo-Saxon  .   .  . 
(etc.,  etc.) 
George  III.  {to  Burke):  Who's  that?     Eh,  what? 

Who's  that?    Who  ever's  that? 
Burke  :  Dread  sire  !     It  is  the  Corsican  Vampire. 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  43 

George  III.  :  Napoleon?    What?    I  thought  that  he 
was  leaner. 
I  thought  that  he  was  leaner.     What?    What?    What? 
Napoleon  {sitting  down)    .    .    .    such  dispositions ! 
Order  !    Teie  d'Armee  I 

{Slight  applause) 
Herod  {rises  suddenly  without  being  asked,  crosses 
his  arms,  glares,  and  shouts  very  loudly). 
Ha  !  Would  you  have  Imperial  hearing  ?    Hounds  ! 
I  am  that  Herod  which  is  he  that  am 
The  lonely  Lebanonian  {interruption)  who  despaired 
In  Deep  Marsupial  Dens  .   .   .  {cries  of  "Sit  down/") 

...  In  dreadful  hollows 
To — {"Sit  downT') — tear  great  trees  with  the  teeth, 

and  hurricanes — {"Sit  down/") — 
That  shook  the  hills  of  Moab  ! 

Chorus  of  Dead  Men  :  Oh  !    Sit  down. 

{He  is  swamped  by  the  clamour,  iti  the  midst  of  which 
Lucullus  murmurs  to  himself) 

LucuLLUs   {musing) :    The  banquet's   done.      There 
was  a  tribute  drawn 
Of  anchovies  and  olives  and  of  soup 
In  tins  of  conquered  nations ;  subject  whiting  : 
Saddle  of  mutton  from  the  antipodes 
Close  on  the  walls  of  ice ;  Laponian  pheasants ; 
Eggs  of  Canadian  rebels,  humbled  now 
To  such  obeisance — scrambled  eggs — and  butter 
From  Brittany  enslaved,  and  the  white  bread 
Hardened  for  heroes  in  the  test  of  time, 
Was  California's  offering.    But  the  cheese, 
The  cheese  was  ours.   .   .   .    Oh  !  but  the  glory  faded 


44  THE  AFTERMATH 

Of  feasting  at  repletion  mocks  our  arms 
And  threatens  even  Empire. 

{Great  noise  of  Vulgarians,  a  mob  of  people,  hetalds, 
trumpets,  flags.     Enter  Vitellius.) 

ViTELLius  :  1  have  dined  ! 

But  not  with  you.     The  master  of  the  world 
Has  dined  alone  and  at  his  own  expense. 
And  oh  ! — I  am  almost  too  full  for  words — 
But  oh  !     My  lieges,  I  have  used  you  well  ! 
I  have  commanded  fifteen  hundred  seats 
And  standing  room  for  something  like  a  thousand 
To  view  my  triumph  over  Nobody 
Upon  the  limelit  stage. 

Herod  :  Oh  !  rare  Vitellius, 

Oh  !  Prominent  great  Imperial  ears  !     Oh  !  Mouth 
To  bellow  largesse  !     Oh  !  And  rolling  Thunder, 
And  trains  of  smoke.     And  oh  !   .   .   . 

Vitellius  :  Let  in  the  vulgar 

To  see  the  master  sight  of  their  dull  lives  : 
Great  Csesar  putting  on  his  overcoat. 
And  then,  my  loved  companions,  we'll  away 
To  see  the  real  Herod  in  the  Play. 

{The  Shades  pass  out  in  a  crowd.  In  the  street 
Theocritus  is  heard  singing  in  a  voice  that  gets 
fainter  and  fainter  with  distance.  .  .  .) 

"  Put  me  somewhere  ea-heast  of  Su-hez, 
Were  the  best  is  loi-hoike  the  worst — 
Were  there  hain'  no  " — {and  so  forth). 

Finis. 


ON    POLITICAL  APPEALS  45 

It  is  not  enough  to  compose  such  appeals  as  naay 
quicken  the  nation  to  a  perception  of  her  peculiar 
mission ;  it  is  necessary  to  paint  for  her  guidance  the 
abominations  and  weakness  of  foreign  countries.  The 
young  writer  may  be  trusted  to  know  his  duty  instinc- 
tively in  this  matter,  but  should  his  moral  perception  be 
blunted,  a  sharper  argument  will  soon  remind  him  of 
what  he  owes  to  the  Common  Conscience  of  Christians. 
He  that  cannot  write,  and  write  with  zeal,  upon  the 
Balkans,  or  upon  Finland,  or  upon  the  Clerical  trouble, 
or  upon  whatever  lies  before  us  to  do  for  righteousness, 
is  not  worthy  of  a  place  in  English  letters  :  the  public 
and  his  editor  will  very  soon  convince  him  of  what  he 
has  lost  by  an  unmanly  reticence. 

His  comrades,  who  are  content  to  deal  with  such 
matters  as  they  arise,  will  not  be  paid  at  a  higher  rate  : 
but  they  will  be  paid  more  often.  They  will  not  infre- 
quently be  paid  from  several  sources ;  they  will  have 
many  opportunities  for  judging  those  financial  questions 
which  are  invariably  mixed  up  with  the  great  battle 
against  the  Ultramontane,  the  Cossack,  and  the  Turk. 
In  Cairo,  Frankfort,  Pretoria,  Mayfair,  Shanghai,  their 
latter  days  confirm  Dr.  Caliban's  profound  conclusion  : 
"  Whosoever  works  for  Humanity  works,  whether  he 
know  it  or  not,  for  himself  as  well."* 

I  earnestly  beseech  the  reader  of  this  textbook, 
especially  if  he  be  young,  to  allow  no  false  shame  to 
modify  his  zeal  in  judging  the  vileness  of  the  Continent. 
We  know  whatever  can  be  known ;  all  criticism  or 
qualification    is    hypocrisy ;    all    silence    is    cowardice. 

*  This  Phase  closes  the  XXXIVth  of  Dr.  Caliban's 
"  Subjects  for  Sinners." 


46  THE   AFTERMATH 

There  is  work  to  be  done.     Let  the  writer  take  up  his 
pen  and  write. 

I  had  some  little  hesitation  what  model  to  put  before 
the  student.  This  book  does  not  profess  to  be  more  than 
an  introduction  to  the  elements  of  our  science;  I  there- 
fore omitted  what  had  first  seemed  to  me  of  some  value, 
the  letters  written  on  a  special  commission  to  Pondi- 
cherry  during  the  plague  and  famine  in  that  unhappy 
and  ill-governed  remnant  of  a  falling  empire.  The 
articles  on  the  tortures  in  the  Philippines  were  never 
printed,  and  might  mislead.  I  have  preferred  to  show 
Priestcraft  and  Liberty  in  their  eternal  struggle  as  they 
appeared  to  me  in  the  character  of  Special  Commissioner 
for  Out  and  About  during  the  troubles  of  190 1.  It  is 
clear,  and  I  think  unbiassed ;  it  opens  indeed  in  that, 
light  fashion  which  is  a  concession  to  contemporary 
journalism  :  but  the  half  frivolous  exterior  conceals  a 
permanent  missionary  purpose.  Its  carefully  collected 
array  of  facts  give,  I  suggest,  a  vivid  picture  of  one 
particular  battlefield ;  that  whereon  there  rage  to-day 
the  opposed  forces  which  will  destroy  or  save  the  French 
people.  The  beginner  could  not  have  a  better  intro- 
duction to  his  struggle  against  the  infamies  of 
Clericalism.  Let  him  ask  himself  (as  Mr.  Gardy, 
M.P.,  asked  in  a  letter  to  Out  and  About)  the  indig- 
nant question,  "Could  such  things  happen  here  in 
England?" 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  47 


THE   SHRINE   OF    ST.    LOUP 

My  excellent  good  Dieyfusards,  anti-Dreyfusards, 
Baptists,  Anabaptists,  pre-Monstratentians,  antiquaries, 
sterling  fellows,  foreign  correspondents,  home-readers, 
historians,  Nestorians,  philosophers,  Deductionists, 
Inductionists,  Prcetorians  (I  forgot  those),  Csesarists, 
Lazarists,  Catholics,  Protestants,  Agnostics,  and 
militant  atheists,  as  also  all  you  Churchmen,  Noncon- 
formists, Particularists,  very  strong  secularists,  and 
even  you,  my  well-beloved  little  brethren  called  The 
Peculiar  People,  give  ear  attentively  and  listen  to  what 
is  to  follow,  and  you  shall  learn  more  of  a  matter  that 
has  woefully  disturbed  you  than  ever  you  would  get 
from  the  Daily  Mail  or  from  Mynheer  van  Damm,  or 
even  from  Dr.  Biggies'  Walks  and  Talks  in  France. 

In  an  upper  valley  of  the  Dauphine  there  is  a  village 
called  Lagarde.  From  this  village,  at  about  half  past 
four  o'clock  of  a  pleasant  June  morning,  there  walked 
out  with  his  herd  one  Jean  Rigors,  a  herdsman  and 
half-wit.  He  had  not  proceeded  very  far  towards  the 
pastures  above  the  village,  and  the  sun  was  barely 
showing  above  the  peak  profanely  called  The  Three 
Bishops,  when  he  had  the  fortune  to  meet  the  Blessed 
St.  Loup,  or  Lupus,  formerly  a  hermit  in  that  valley, 
who  had  died  some  fourteen  hundred  years  ago,  but 
whose  name,  astonishing  as  it  may  seem  to  the  author  of 
The  Justification  of  Fame,  is  still  remembered  among 
the  populace.  The  Blessed  Lupus  admonished  the 
peasant,  recalling  the  neglect  into  which  public  worship 
had   fallen,    reluctantly   promised   a   sign   whereby    it 


48  THE   AFTERMATH 

might  be  recreated  among  the  faithful,  and  pointed  out 
a  nasty  stream  of  muddy  water,  one  out  of  fifty  that 
trickled  from  the  moss  of  the  Alps.  He  then  struck 
M.  Rigors  a  slight,  or,  as  some  accounts  have  it,  a 
heavy,  blow  with  his  staff,  and  disappeared  in  glory. 

Jean  Rigors,  who  could  not  read  or  write,  being  a 
man  over  thirty,  and  having  therefore  forgotten  the 
excellent  free  lessons  provided  by  the  Republic  in 
primary  schools,  was  not  a  little  astonished  at  the 
apparition.  Having  a  care  to  tether  a  certain  calf 
whom  he  knew  to  be  light-headed,  he  left  the  rest  of 
the  herd  to  its  own  unerring  instincts,  and  ran  back  to 
the  village  to  inform  the  parish  priest  of  the  very 
remarkable  occurrence  of  which  he  had  been  the  witness 
or  victim.  He  found  upon  his  return  that  the  morning 
Mass,  from  which  he  had  been  absent  off  and  on  for 
some  seven  years,  was  already  at  the  Gospel,  and 
attended  to  it  with  quite  singular  devotion,  until  in  the 
space  of  some  seventeen  minutes  he  was  able  to  meet  the 
priest  in  the  sacristy  and  inform  him  of  what  had 
happened. 

The  priest,  who  had  heard  of  such  miraculous  appear- 
ances in  other  villages,  but  (being  a  humble  man,  un- 
fitted for  worldly  success  and  idiotic  in  business  matters) 
had  never  dared  to  hope  that  one  would  be  vouchsafed 
to  his  own  cure,  proceeded  at  once  to  the  source  of  the 
muddy  streamlet,  and  (unhistorical  as  the  detail  may 
seem  to  the  author  of  Our  Old  Europe,  Whence  and 
Whither?)  neglected  to  reward  the  hind,  who,  indeed, 
did  not  expect  pecuniary  remuneration,  for  these  two 
excellent  reasons  :  First,  that  he  knew  the  priest  to  be 
by  far  the  poorest  man  in  the  parish ;  secondly,  that  he 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  49 

thought  a  revelation  from  the  other  world  incom- 
mensurate with  money  payments  even  to  the  extent  of 
a  five-franc  piece.  The  next  Sunday  (that  is,  three  days 
afterwards)  the  priest,  who  had  previously  informed  his 
brethren  throughout  the  Canton,  preached  a  sermon  upon 
the  decay  of  religion  and  the  growing  agnosticism  of  the 
modern  world — a  theme  which,  as  they  had  heard  it 
publicly  since  the  Christian  religion  had  been  established 
by  Constantine  in  those  parts  and  privately  for  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  before,  his  congregation 
received  with  some  legitimate  languor.  When,  however, 
he  came  to  what  was  the  very  gist  of  his  remarks,  the 
benighted  foreigners  pricked  up  their  ears  (a  physical 
atavism  impossible  to  our  own  more  enlightened  com- 
munity), and  Le  Sieur  Rigors,  who  could  still  remember 
the  greater  part  of  the  services  of  the  Church,  was  filled 
with  a  mixture  of  nervousness  and  pride,  while  the  good 
priest  informed  his  hearers,  in  language  that  would  have 
been  eloquent  had  he  not  been  trained  in  the  little 
seminary,  that  the  great  St.  Lupus  himself  had  appeared 
to  a  devout  member  of  his  parish  and  had  pointed  out  to 
him  a  miraculous  spring,  for  the  proper  enshrinement  of 
which  he  requested — nay,  he  demanded — the  contribu- 
tions of  the  faithful. 

At  that  one  sitting  the  excellent  hierarch  received  no 
less  a  sum  than  1,053  francs  and  67  centimes  j  the  odd 
two-centimes  (a  coin  that  has  disappeared  from  the 
greater  part  of  France)  being  contributed  by  a  road- 
mender,  who  was  well  paid  by  the  State,  but  who  was  in 
the  custom  of  receiving  charity  from  tourists ;  the  said 
tourists  being  under  the  erroneous  impression  that  he 
was  a  beggar.     He  also,  by  the  way,  would  entertain 

4 


50  THE  AFTERMATH 

the  more  Anglo-Saxon  of  these  with  the  folk-lore  of  the 
district,  in  which  his  fertile  imagination  was  never  at 
fault. 

It  will  seem  astonishing  to  the  author  of  Village 
Communities  in  Western  Europe  to  hear  of  so  large  a 
sum  as  jQ^o  being  subscribed  by  the  congregation  of  this 
remote  village,  and  it  would  seem  still  more  astonishing 
to  him  could  he  see  the  very  large  chapel  erected  over 
the  spring  of  St.  Loup.  I  do  not  say  that  he  would 
understand  the  phenomenon,  but  I  do  say  that  he  would 
become  a  more  perturbed  and  therefore  a  wiser  man  did 
he  know  the  following  four  facts  :  (i)  That  the  freehold 
value  of  the  village  and  its  communal  land,  amounting 
to  the  sum  of  a  poor  ^20,000,  was  not  in  the  possession 
of  a  landlord,  but  in  that  of  these  wretched  peasants. 
(2)  That  the  one  rich  man  of  the  neighbourhood,  a 
retired  glove -maker,  being  also  a  fanatic,  presented  his 
subscriptions  in  such  a  manner  that  they  were  never 
heard  of.  He  had,  moreover,  an  abhorrence  for  the 
regulation  of  charity.  (3)  That  the  master  mason  in  the 
neighbouring  town  had  in  his  youth  been  guilty  of 
several  mortal  sins,  and  was  so  weak  as  to  imagine  that 
a  special  tender  would  in  such  a  case  make  a  kind  of 
reparation;  and  (4)  that  the  labourers  employed  were 
too  ignorant  to  cheat  and  too  illiterate  to  combine. 

The  new  shrine  waxed  and  prospered  exceedingly, 
and  on  the  Thursday  following  its  dedication  an 
epileptic,  having  made  use  of  the  water,  was  restored 
to  a  normal,  and  even  commonplace,  state  of  mind.  On 
the  Friday  a  girl,  who  said  that  she  had  been  haunted 
by  devils  (though  until  then  no  one  had  heard  of  the 
matter),  declared,  upon  drinking  a  cup  from  the  spring 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  51 

of  St.  Loup,  that  she  was  now  haunted  by  angels — a 
very  much  pleasanter  condition  of  affairs.  The  Sunday 
following,  the  village  usurer,  who  called  himself 
Bertollin,  but  who  was  known  to  be  a  wicked  foreigner 
from  beyond  the  Alps,  of  the  true  name  of  Bertolino, 
ran  into  the  inn  like  one  demented,  and  threw  down  the 
total  of  his  ill-gotten  gains  for  the  benefit  of  the  shrine. 
They  amounted,  indeed,  to  but  a  hundred  francs,  but 
then  his  clientele  were  close  and  skin-flint,  as  peasant 
proprietors  and  free  men  generally  are  the  world  over; 
and  it  was  well  known  that  the  cobbler,  who  had  himself 
borrowed  a  small  sum  for  a  month,  and  quadrupled  it  in 
setting  up  lodgings  for  artists,  had  been  unable  to 
recover  from  the  usurer  the  mending  of  his  boots. 

By  this  time  the  Bishop  had  got  wind  of  the  new 
shrine,  and  wrote  to  the  Cure  of  Lagarde  a  very  strong 
letter,  in  which,  after  reciting  the  terms  of  the  Con- 
cordat, Clause  714  of  the  Constitution  and  the  decree 
of  May  29th,  1854,  he  pointed  out  that  by  all  these  and 
other  fundamental  or  organic  laws  of  the  Republic,  he 
was  master  in  his  own  diocese.  He  rebuked  the  cure  for 
the  superstitious  practice  which  had  crept  into  his  cure, 
ordered  the  chapel  to  be  used  for  none  but  ordinary 
purposes,  and  issued  a  pastoral  letter  upon  the  evils  of 
local  superstitions.  This  pastoral  letter  was  read  with 
unction  and  holy  mirth  in  the  neighbouring  monastery  of 
Bcrnion  (founded  in  defiance  of  the  law  by  the  widow 
of  a  President  of  the  Republic),  but  with  sorrow  and 
without  comment  in  the  little  church  of  Lagarde. 

The  Minister  of  the  Interior  and  the  Minister  of 
Public  Worship,  each  in  his  separate  way,  proceeded  to 
stamp  out  this  survival  of  the  barbaric  period  of  Europe. 


52  THE   AFTERMATH 

The  first  by  telling  the  Prefect  to  tell  the  sub-Prefect  to 
tell  the  Mayor  that  any  attempt  to  levy  taxes  in  favour 
of  the  shrine  would  be  administratively  punished  :  the 
second  by  writing  a  sharp  official  note  to  the  Bishop  for 
not  having  acted  on  the  very  day  that  St.  Loup  appeared 
to  the  benighted  herdsman.  The  sub-Prefect  came  from 
the  horrible  town  of  La  Rochegayere  and  lunched  with 
the  Mayor,  who  was  the  donor  of  the  new  stained-glass 
window  in  the  church,  and  they  talked  about  the  advan- 
tages of  forcing  the  Government  to  construct  a  road 
through  the  valley  to  accommodate  the  now  numerous 
pilgrims;  a  subject  which  the  sub-Prefect,  who  was 
about  to  be  promoted,  approached  with  official  non- 
chalance, zut  the  ALiyor  (who  owned  the  principal  inn) 
with  pertinacity  and  fervour.  They  then  went  out,  the 
Mayor  in  his  tricolour  scarf  to  lock  up  the  gate  in  front 
of  the  holy  well,  the  sub-Prefect  to  escort  his  young 
wife  to  the  presbytery,  where  she  left  a  gift  of  500 
francs  :  the  sub-Prefect  thought  it  improper  for  a  lady 
to  walk  alone. 

Upon  the  closure  of  the  shrine  a  local  paper  (joint 
property  of  the  Bishop  and  a  railway  contractor) 
attacked  the  atheism  of  the  Government.  A  local 
duchess,  who  was  ignorant  of  the  very  terminology  of 
religion,  sent  a  donation  of  5,000  francs  to  the  cure; 
with  this  the  excellent  man  built  a  fine  approach 
to  the  new  chapel,  "which,"  as  he  sorrowfully  and 
justly  observed,  "  the  faithful  may  approach,  though 
an  atheistic  Government  forbids  the  use  of  the  shrine." 
That  same  week,  by  an  astonishing  accident,  the 
Ministry  was  overturned ;  the  Minister  of  the  Interior 
was   compelled    to   retire   into   private   life,    and   lived 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  53 

dependent  upon  his  uncle  (a  Canon  of  Rheims).  The 
Minister  of  Public  Worship  (who  had  become  increas- 
ingly unpopular  through  the  growth  of  anti-Semitic 
feeling)  took  up  his  father's  money-lending  business 
at  Antwerp. 

Next  week  the  lock  and  seals  were  discovered  to  have 
been  in  some  inexplicable  way  removed  from  the  gate  of 
the  well  and  (by  Article  893  of  the  Administrative  Code) 
before  they  could  be  replaced  an  action  was  necessary 
at  the  assize-town  of  Grenoble.  This  action  (by  the 
Order  of  1875  on  Law  Terms)  could  not  take  place  for 
six  months ;  and  in  that  interval  an  astonishing  number 
of  things  happened  at  Lagarde. 

An  old  Sapper  General,  who  had  devised  the  special 
obturator  for  light  quick-firing  guns,  and  who  was 
attached  to  the  most  backward  superstitions,  came  in 
full  uniform  to  the  Chapel  and  gave  the  shrine  10,000 
francs  :  a  mysteriously  large  endowment,  as  this  sum 
was  nearly  half  his  income,  and  he  had  suffered  im- 
prisonment in  youth  for  his  Republican  opinions.  He 
said  it  was  for  the  good  of  his  soul,  but  the  editor  of 
the  Horreur  knew  better,  and  denounced  him.  He  was 
promptly  retired  upon  a  pension  about  a  third  greater 
than  that  to  which  he  was  legally  entitled,  and  received 
by  special  secret  messenger  from  the  Minister  of  \\'ar  an 
earnest  request  to  furnish  a  memorandum  on  the  fortifi- 
cations of  the  Isere  and  to  consider  himself  inspector, 
upon  mobilisation,  of  that  important  line  of  defence. 

Two  monks,  who  had  walked  all  the  way  from  Spain, 
settled  in  a  house  near  the  well.  A  pilgrim,  who  had 
also  evidently  come  from  a  prodigious  distance  on  foot, 
but  gave  false  information  as  to  his  movements,  was 


54  THE   AFTERMATH 

arrested  by  the  police  and  subsequently  released.  The 
arrest  was  telegraphed  to  the  Times  and  much  com- 
mented upon,  but  the  suicide  of  a  prominent  London 
solicitor  and  other  important  news  prevented  any  mention 
of  his  release. 

A  writer  of  great  eminence,  who  had  been  a  leading 
sceptic  all  his  life,  stayed  at  Lagarde  for  a  month  and 
became  a  raving  devotee.  His  publishers  (MM.  Her- 
mann Khan)  punished  him  by  refusing  to  receive  his 
book  upon  the  subject ;  but  by  some  occult  influence, 
probably  that  of  the  Jesuits,  he  was  paid  several 
hundreds  for  it  by  the  firm  of  Zadoc  et  Cie ;  ten  years 
afterwards  he  died  of  a  congested  liver,  a  catastrophe 
which  some  ascribed  to  a  Jewish  plot,  and  others  treated 
as  a  proof  that  his  intellect  had  long  been  failing. 

A  common  peasant  fellow,  that  had  been  paralysed 
for  ten  years,  bathed  in  the  water  and  walked  away  in  a 
sprightly  fashion  afterwards.  This  was  very  likely  due 
to  his  ignorance,  for  a  doctor  who  narrowly  watched  the 
whole  business  has  proved  that  he  did  not  know  the 
simplest  rudiments  of  arithmetic  or  history,  and  how 
should  such  a  fellow  understand  so  difficult  a  disease  as 
paralysis  of  the  Taric  nerve — especially  if  it  were  (as 
the  doctor  thought  quite  evident)  complicated  by  a 
stricture  of  the  Upper  Dalmoid  ? 

Two  deaf  women  were,  as  is  very  commonly  the  case 
with  enthusiasts  of  this  kind,  restored  to  their  hearing ; 
for  how  long  we  do  not  know,  as  their  subsequent 
history  was  not  traced  for  more  than  five  years. 

A  dumb  boy  talked,  but  in  a  very  broken  fashion, 
and  as  he  had  a  brother  a  priest  and  another  brother  in 
the  army,  trickery  was  suspected. 


ON   POLITICAL  APPEALS  55 

An  English  merchant,  who  had  some  trouble  with  his 
eyes,  bathed  in  the  water  at  the  instance  of  a  sister  who 
desired  to  convert  him.  He  could  soon  see  so  well  that 
he  was  able  to  write  to  the  Freethinker  an  account  of  his 
healing,  called  "The  Medicinal  Springs  of  Lagarde," 
but,  as  he  has  subsequently  gone  totally  blind,  the 
momentary  repute  against  ophthalmia  which  the  water 
might  have  obtained  was  nipped  in  the  bud. 

What  was  most  extraordinary  of  all,  a  very  respect- 
able director  of  a  railway  came  to  the  village  quietly, 
under  an  assumed  name,  and,  after  drinking  the  water, 
made  a  public  confession  of  the  most  incredible  kind 
and  has  since  become  a  monk.  His  son,  to  whom  he 
made  over  his  whole  fortune,  had  previously  instituted  a 
demand  at  law  to  be  made  guardian  of  his  estates ;  but, 
on  hearing  of  his  father's  determination  to  embrace 
religion,  he  was  too  tolerant  to  pursue  the  matter 
further. 

To  cut  a  long  story  short,  as  Homer  said  when  he 
abruptly  closed  the  Odyssey,  some  740  cases  of  mira- 
culous cures  occurred  between  the  mysterious  opening  of 
the  gates  and  the  date  for  the  trial  at  Grenoble.  In  that 
period  a  second  and  much  larger  series  of  buildings  had 
begun  to  arise ;  the  total  property  involved  in  the  case 
amounted  to  750,000  francs,  and  (by  clause  61  of  the 
Regulation  on  Civil  Tribunals)  the  local  court  of  assize 
was  no  longer  competent.  Before,  however,  the  case 
could  be  removed  to  Paris,  the  assent  of  the  Grenoble 
bench  had  to  be  formally  obtained,  and  this,  by  the 
singularly  Republican  rule  of  "  Non-avant^^  (instituted 
by  Louis  XL),  took  just  two  years.  By  that  time  the 
new  buildings  were  finished,  eight  priests  were  attached 


56  THE   AFTERMATH 

to  the  Church,  a  monastery  of  seventy-two  monks,  five 
hotels,  a  golf  links,  and  a  club  were  in  existence.  The 
total  taxes  paid  by  Lagarde  to  the  Treasury  amounted 
to  half-amillion  francs  a  year. 

The  Government  had  become  willing  (under  the 
"Compromise  of  '49,"  which  concerns  Departments 
V.  the  State  in  the  matter  of  internal  communications) 
to  build  a  fine,  great  road  up  to  Lagarde.  There  was 
also  a  railway,  a  Custom  House,  and  a  project  of  sub- 
prefecture.  Moreover,  in  some  underhand  way  or  other, 
several  hundred  people  a  month  were  cured  of  various 
ailments,  from  the  purely  subjective  (such  as  buzzing  in 
the  ears)  to  those  verging  upon  the  truly  objective  (such 
as  fracture  of  the  knee-pan  or  the  loss  of  an  eye). 

The  Government  is  that  of  a  practical  and  common - 
sense  people.  It  will  guide  or  protect,  but  it  cannot 
pretend  to  coerce.  Lagarde  therefore  flourishes,  the 
Bishop  is  venerated,  the  monastery  grumbles  in  silence, 
and  there  is  some  talk  of  an  Hungarian  journalist,  born 
in  Constantinople,  whose  father  did  time  for  cheating  in 
the  Russian  Army,  writing  one  of  his  fascinating  anti- 
religious  romances  in  nine  hundred  pages  upon  the 
subject.  You  will  learn  far  more  from  such  a  book  than 
you  can  possibly  learn  from  the  narrow  limits  of  the 
above. 


Ill 

THE  SHORT  STORY 

The  short  story  is  the  simplest  of  all  forms  of  literary 
composition.  It  is  at  the  same  time  by  far  the  most 
lucrative.  It  has  become  (to  use  one  of  Dr.  Caliban's 
most  striking  phrases)  "  part  of  the  atmosphere  of  our 
lives."  In  a  modified  form,  it  permeates  our  private 
correspondence,  our  late  Baron  Reuter's  telegraphic 
messages,  the  replies  of  our  cabinet  ministers,  the 
rulings  of  our  judges ;  and  it  has  become  inseparable 
from  affirmations  upon  oath  before  Magistrates, 
Registrars,  Coroners,  Courts  of  Common  Jurisdiction, 
Official  Receivers,  and  all  others  qualified  under  17 
Vic.  21,  Caps.  2  and  14;  sub-section  III. 

To  return  to  the  short  story.  Its  very  reason  for 
being  {raison  d'etre)  is  simplicity.  It  suits  our  strenuous, 
active  race;  nor  would  I  waste  the  student's  time  by 
recalling  the  fact  that,  in  the  stagnant  civilisation  of 
China,  a  novel  or  play  deals  with  the  whole  of  the 
hero's  life,  in  its  minutest  details,  through  seventy 
years.     The  contrast  conveys  an  awful  lesson  ! 

Let  us  confine  ourselves,  however,  to  the  purpose  of 
these  lines,  and  consider  the  short  story ;  for  it  is  the 
business  of  every  true  man  to  do  what  lies  straight  before 
him  as  honestly  and  directly  as  he  can. 

The  Short  Story,  on  account  of  its  simplicity,  coupled 
with  the  high  rates  of  pay  attached  to  it,  attracts  at  the 

57 


58  THE   AFTERMATH 

outset  the  great  mass  of  writers.  Several  are  successful, 
and  in  their  eager  rapture  (I  have  but  to  mention  John 
and  Mary  Hitherspoon)  produce  such  numerous  examples 
of  this  form  of  art,  that  the  student  may  ask  what  more 
I  have  to  teach  him?  In  presenting  a  model  for  his 
guidance,  and  reproducing  the  great  skeleton  lines  upon 
which  the  Short  Story  is  built  up,  I  would  remind  my 
reader  that  it  is  my  function  to  instruct  and  his  to  learn ; 
and  I  would  \varn  him  that  even  in  so  elementary  a 
branch  of  letters  as  is  this,  "  pride  will  have  a  fall." 

It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  further  upon  this  un- 
pleasant aspect  of  my  duty. 

Eet  us  first  consider  where  the  writer  of  the  Short 
Story  stands  before  the  Law.  What  is  her  Legal 
Position  as  to  {a)  the  length,  {b)  the  plot  of  a  short 
story  which  she  may  have  contracted  to  deliver  on  a 
certain  date  to  a  particular  publisher,  editor,  agent,  or 
creditor?     The  following  two  decisions  apply: 

Mabwopthy  Mabworthy  v.  Craivley. — Mrs.  Mabworthy 
V.  Crawley,  brought  jj^  action  against  Crawley  and  Co. 
to  recover  payment  due  for  a  short  story 
ordered  of  her  by  defendant.  Defendant 
pleaded  lack  of  specific  performance,  as  story 
dealt  with  gradual  change  of  spiritual  outlook, 
during  forty  years,  of  maiden  lady  inhabiting 
Ealing.  It  was  held  by  Mr.  Justice  Pake 
that  the  subject  so  treated  was  not  of 
"ordinary  length."  Judgment  for  the 
defendant.  Mrs.  Mabworthy,  prompted  by 
her  sex,  fortune,  and  solicitor  to  appeal, 
the   matter    was    brought    before    the    Court 


THE   SHORT  STORY  59 

of  Appeal,  which  decided  that  the  word 
"ordinary"  was  equivalent  to  the  word 
"  reasonable."  Judgment  for  the  defendant, 
with  costs.  Mrs.  Mabworthy,  at  the  insti- 
gation of  the  Devil,  sold  a  reversion  and 
carried  the  matter  to  the  House  of  Lords, 
where  it  was  laid  down  that  "a  Short  Story 
should  be  of  such  length  as  would  be  found 
tolerable  by  any  man  of  ordinary  firmness  and 
courage."     Judgment  for  the  defendant. 

The  next  case  is  the  case  of — 

Gibson?'.  Gibson  v.  Acle. — In  this  case,  Mr.  Phillip 
Aele.  Gibson,  the  well-known  publisher,  brought  an 
action  for  the  recovery  of  a  sum  of  ;^3  los., 
advanced  to  Miss  Acle,  of  "  The  Wolf  cote," 
Croydon,  in  consideration  of  her  contracting 
to  supply  a  short  story,  with  regard  to  the 
manuscript  of  which  he  maintained,  upon 
receiving  it,  that  (i)  it  was  not  a  story,  and 
(2)  it  was  not  technically  "  short,"  as  it 
filled  but  eighteen  lines  in  the  very  large  type 
known  as  grand  pica.  Three  very  important 
points  were  decided  in  this  case ;  for  the 
Judge  (Mr.  Justice  Veale,  brother  of  Lord 
Burpham)  maintained,  with  sturdy  common 
sense,  that  if  a  publisher  bought  a  manuscript, 
no  matter  what,  so  long  as  it  did  not  offend 
common  morals  or  the  public  security  of  the 
realm,  he  was  bound  to  "print,  comfort, 
cherish,  defend,  enforce,  push,  maintain, 
advertise,    circulate,    and    make    public    the 


6o  THE   AFTERMATH 

same";  and  he  was  supported  in  the  Court 
of  Crown  Cases  Reserved  in  his  decision 
that : 

First:  The  word  "short  "  was  plainly  the 
more  applicable  the  less  lengthy  were  the 
matter  delivered  :  and 

Secondly:  The  word  "story  "  would  hold 
as  a  definition  for  any  concoction  of  words 
whatsoever,  of  which  it  could  be  proved  that 
it  was  built  up  of  separate  sentences,  such 
sentences  each  to  consist  of  at  least  one  pre- 
dicate and  one  verb,  real  or  imaginary. 

Both  these  decisions  are  quite  recent,  and  may  be 
regarded  as  the  present  state  of  the  law  on  the 
matter. 

Once  the  legal  position  of  the  author  is  grasped,  it  is 
necessary  to  acquire  the  five  simple  rules  which  govern 
the  Short  Story. 

I  St.  It  should,  as  a  practical  matter  apart  from  the 
law,  contain  some  incident. 

2nd.  That  incident  should  take  place  on  the  sea,  or 
in  brackish,  or  at  least  tidal,  waters. 

3rd.  The  hero  should  be  English-speaking,  white  or 
black. 

4th.  His  adventures  should  be  horrible ;  but  no  kind 
of  moral  should  be  drawn  from  them,  unless  it  be  desired 
to  exalt  the  patriotism  of  the  reader. 

5th.  Every  short  story  should  be  divided  by  a 
"  Csesura  "  :  that  is,  it  should  break  off  sharp  in  the 
middle,  and  you  have  then  the  choice  of  three  distinct 
courses  : 


THE   SHORT  STORY  6i 

(a)  To  stop  altogether — as  is  often  done  by  people 
who  die,  and  whose  remains  are  published. 

(b)  To  go  on  with  a  totally  different  subject.  This 
method  is  not  to  be  commended  to  the  beginner.  It  is 
common  to  rich  or  popular  writers ;  and  even  they  have 
commonly  the  decency  to  put  in  asterisks. 

(c)  To  go  on  with  your  story  where  it  left  off,  as  I 
have  done  in  the  model  which  follows. 

That  model  was  constructed  especially  with  the  view 
to  guide  the  beginner.  Its  hero  is  a  fellow  subject, 
white — indeed,  an  Englisliman.  The  scene  is  laid  in 
water,  not  perhaps  salt,  but  at  least  brackish.  The 
adventure  preys  upon  the  mind.  The  moral  is  doubt- 
ful :  the  Caesura  marked  and  obvious.  Moreover,  it 
begins  in  the  middle,  which  (as  I  omitted  to  state  above) 
is  the  very  hall-mark  of  the  Vivid  Manner. 


THE   ACCIDENT  TO  MR.   THORPE 

When  Mr.  Thorpe,  drysalter,  of  St.  Mary  Axe,  E.C., 
fell  into  the  water,  it  was  the  opinion  of  those  who 
knew  him  best  that  he  would  be  drowned.  I  say  "  those 
who  knew  him  best"  because,  in  the  crowd  that 
immediately  gathered  upon  the  embankment,  there  were 
present  not  a  few  of  his  friends.  They  had  been 
walking  home  together  on  this  fine  evening  along  the 
river  side,  and  now  that  Mr.  Thorpe  was  in  such  peril, 
not  one  could  be  got  to  do  more  than  lean  upon  the 
parapet  shouting  for  the  police,  though  they  should  have 
known  how  useless  was  that  body  of  men  in  any  other 
than  its  native  element.     Alas  !   how   frail  a  thing  is 


62  THE  AFTERMATH 

human  friendship,  and  how  terribly  does  misfortune 
bring  it  to  the  test. 

How  had  Mr.  Thorpe  fallen  into  the  water?  I  am 
not  surprised  at  your  asking  that  question.  It  argues  a 
very  observant,  critical,  and  accurate  mind ;  a  love  of 
truth;  a  habit  of  weighing  evidence;  and  altogether  a 
robust,  sturdy,  practical,  Anglo-Saxon  kind  of  an  atti- 
tude, that  does  you  credit.  You  will  not  take  things  on 
hearsay,  and  there  is  no  monkish  credulity  about  you. 
I  congratulate  you.  You  say  (and  rightly)  that  Honest 
Merchants  do  not  fall  into  the  Thames  for  nothing,  the 
thing  is  unusual ;  you  want  (very  properly)  to  know  how 
it  happened,  or,  as  you  call  it,  "occurred."  I  cannot 
tell  you.  I  was  not  there  at  the  time.  All  I  know  is, 
that  he  did  fall  in,  and  that,  as  matter  of  plain  fact 
(and  you  are  there  to  judge  fact,  remember,  not  law), 
Mr.  Thorpe  was  at  6.15  in  the  evening  of  June  7th, 
1892,  floundering  about  in  the  water  a  little  above 
Cleopatra's  Needle ;  and  there  are  a  cloud  of  witnesses. 

It  now  behoves  me  to  detail  with  great  accuracy  the 
circumstances  surrounding  his  immersion,  the  degree  of 
danger  that  he  ran,  and  how  he  was  saved.  In  the  first 
place,  Mr.  Thorpe  fell  in  at  the  last  of  the  ebb,  so  that 
there  was  no  tide  to  sweep  him  out  to  sea ;  in  the  second 
place,  the  depth  of  water  at  that  spot  was  exactly  five 
feet  two  inches,  so  that  he  could — had  he  but  known  it — 
have  walked  ashore  (for  he  was,  of  course,  over  six  feet 
in  height) ;  in  the  third  place,  the  river  has  here  a  good 
gravelly  bed,  as  you  ought  to  know,  for  the  clay  doesn't 
begin  till  you  get  beyond  Battersea  Bridge — and,  by  the 
way,  this  gravel  accounts  for  the  otherwise  inexplicable 
phenomenon  of  the  little  boys  that  will  dive  for  pennies 


THE  SHORT  STORY  63 

at  low  tide  opposite  the  shot  tower ;  in  the  fourth  place, 
the  water,  as  one  might  have  imagined  at  that  season  of 
the  year,  was  warm  and  comfortable ;  in  the  fifth  place, 
there  lay  but  a  few  yards  from  him  a  Police  Pier,  crowded 
with  lines,  lifebuoys,  boats,  cork-jackets,  and  what  not, 
and  decorated,  as  to  its  Main  Room,  with  a  large  placard 
entitled  "  First  help  to  the  drowning,"  the  same  being 
illustrated  with  cuts,  showing  a  man  of  commonplace 
features  fallen  into  the  hands  of  his  religious  opponents 
and  undergoing  the  torture.  Therefore  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  he  could  have  either  saved  himself  or  have  been 
saved  by  others  without  difficulty.  Indeed,  for  Mr. 
Thorpe  to  have  drowned,  it  would  have  been  necessary 
for  him  to  have  exercised  the  most  determined  self- 
control,  and  to  have  thought  out  the  most  elaborate  of 
suicidal  plans ;  and,  as  a  fact,  he  was  within  forty-three 
seconds  of  his  falling  in  pulled  out  again  by  a  boat- 
hook,  which  was  passed  through  the  back  of  his  frock 
coat :  and  that  is  a  lesson  in  favour  of  keeping  one's  coat 
buttoned  up  like  a  gentleman,  and  not  letting  it  flap 
open  like  an  artist  or  an  anarchist,  or  a  fellow  that 
writes  for  the  papers.  But  I  digress.  The  point  is, 
that  Mr.  Thorpe  was  immediately  saved,  and  there  (you 
might  think)  was  an  end  of  the  matter.  Indeed,  the 
thing  seems  to  come  to  a  conclusion  of  its  own,  and  to 
be  a  kind  of  epic,  for  it  has  a  beginning  where  Mr. 
Thorpe  falls  into  the  water  (and,  note  you,  the  beginning 
of  all  epics  is,  or  should  be,  out  of  the  text) ;  it  has  a 
middle  or  "action,"  where  Mr.  Thorpe  is  floundering 
about  like  a  sea  monster,  and  an  end,  where  he  is  pulled 
out  again.  They  are  of  larger  scope  than  this  little 
story,  and  written  in  a  pompous  manner,  yet  the  Iliad, 


64  THE  AFTERMATH 

the  JEneid,  Abbo's  Siege  of  Paris,  the  Chanson  de 
Roland,  Orlando  Fiirioso,  Thalaha  the  Destroyer,  and 
Mr.  Davidson's  shorter  lyrics  have  no  better  claim  to  be 
epics  in  their  essentials  than  has  this  relation  of  The 
Accident  to  Mr.  Thorpe.  So,  then  (you  say),  that  is  the 
end ;  thank  you  for  the  story  ;  we  are  much  obliged.  If 
ever  you  have  another  simple  little  story  to  tell,  pray 
publish  it  at  large,  and  do  not  keep  it  for  the  exquisite 
delight  of  your  private  circle.  We  thank  you  again  a, 
thousand  times.     Good  morrow. 

Softly,  softly.  I  beg  that  there  may  be  no  undue 
haste  or  sharp  conclusions ;  there  is  something  more  to 
come.  Sit  you  down  and  listen  patiently.  Was  there 
ever  an  epic  that  was  not  continued?  Did  not  the 
Rhapsodists  of  Cos  piece  together  the  Odyssey  after 
their  successful  Iliad?  Did  not  Dionysius  Paracelsus 
write  a  tail  to  the  JEneidl  Was  not  the  Chanson  de 
Roland  followed  by  the  Four  Sons  of  Aytnon?  Could 
Southey  have  been  content  with  Thalaba  had  he  not 
proceeded  to  write  the  adventures  in  America  of  William 
ap  Williams,  or  some  other  Welshman  whose  name  I 
forget?  Eh?  Well,  in  precisely  the  same  manner,  I 
propose  to  add  a  second  and  completing  narrative  to  this 
of  Mr.  Thorpe's  accident ;  so  let  us  have  no  grumbling. 

And  to  understand  what  kind  of  thing  followed  his 
fall  into  the  water,  I  must  explain  to  you  that  nothing 
had  ever  happened  to  Mr.  Thorpe  before ;  he  had  never 
sailed  a  boat,  never  ridden  a  horse,  never  had  a  fight, 
never  written  a  book,  never  climbed  a  mountain — indeed, 
I  might  have  set  out  in  a  long  litany,  covering  several 
pages,  the  startling,  adventurous,  and  dare-devil  things 
that  Mr.  Thorpe  had  never  done ;  and  were  I  to  space 


THE   SHORT  STORY  65 

out  my  work  so,  I  should  be  well  in  the  fashion,  for 
does  not  the  immortal  Kipling  (who  is  paid  by  the  line) 
repeat  his  own  lines  half-a-dozen  times  over,  and  use  in 
profusion  the  lines  of  well-known  ballads  ?  He  does  ; 
and  so  have  I  therefore  the  right  to  space  and  stretch  my 
work  in  whatever  fashion  will  spin  out  the  space  most 
fully  j  and  if  I  do  not  do  so,  it  is  because  I  am  as  eager 
as  you  can  possibly  be  to  get  to  the  end  of  this  chronicle. 
Well  then,  nothing  had  ever  happened  to  Mr.  Thorpe 
before,  and  what  was  the  result  ?  Why  that  this  aqueous 
adventure  of  his  began  to  grow  and  possess  him  as  you 
and  I  are  possessed  by  our  more  important  feats,  by  our 
different  distant  journeys,  our  bold  speculations,  our 
meeting  with  grand  acquaintances,  our  outwitting  of  the 
law;  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  Mr.  Thorpe  in  a  very 
short  time  began  to  lie  prodigiously.  The  symptoms  of 
this  perversion  first  appeared  a  few  days  after  the 
accident,  at  a  lunch  which  he  attended  (with  the  other 
directors  of  the  Marine  Glue  Company)  in  the  City. 
The  company  was  in  process  of  negotiating  a  very 
difficult  piece  of  business,  that  required  all  the  attention 
of  the  directors,  and,  as  is  usual  under  such  circum- 
stances, they  fell  to  telling  amusing  tales  to  one  another. 
One  of  them  had  just  finished  his  story  of  how  a  nephew 
of  his  narrowly  escaped  lynching  at  Leadville,  Colorado, 
when  Mr.  Thorpe,  who  had  been  making  ponderous 
jokes  all  the  morning,  was  suddenly  observed  to  grow 
thoughtful,  and  (after  first  ascertaining  with  some  care 
that  there  was  no  one  present  who  had  seen  him  fall  in) 
he  astonished  the  company  by  saying  :  "  I  cannot  hear 
of  such  escapes  from  death  without  awe.  It  was  but  the 
other  day  that  I  was  saved  as  by  a  miracle  from  drown- 

5 


66  THE  AFTERMATH 

ing."  Then  he  added,  after  a  little  pause,  "  My  whole 
life  seemed  to  pass  before  me  in  a  moment." 

Now  this  was  not  true.  Mr.  Thorpe's  mind  at  the 
moment  he  referred  to  had  been  wholly  engrossed  by 
the  peculiar  sensation  that  follows  the  drinking  of  a 
gallon  of  water  suddenly  when  one  is  not  in  the  least 
thirsty;  but  he  had  already  told  the  tale  so  often,  that 
he  was  fully  persuaded  of  it,  and,  by  this  time,  believed 
that  his  excellent  and  uneventful  life  had  been  presented 
to  him  as  it  is  to  the  drowning  people  in  books. 

His  fall  was  rapid.  He  grew  in  some  vague  way 
to  associate  his  adventure  with  the  perils  of  the  sea. 
Whenever  he  crossed  the  Channel  he  would  draw  some 
fellow-passenger  into  a  conversation,  and,  having  cun- 
ningly led  it  on  to  the  subject  of  shipwreck,  would 
describe  the  awful  agony  of  battling  with  the  waves, 
and  the  outburst  of  relief  on  being  saved.  At  first  he 
did  not  actually  say  that  he  had  himself  struggled  in 
the  vast  and  shoreless  seas  of  the  world,  but  bit  by  bit 
the  last  shreds  of  accuracy  left  him,  and  he  took  to 
painting  with  minute  detail  in  his  conversations  the 
various  scenes  of  his  danger  and  salvation.  Sometimes 
it  was  in  the  "  steep  water  off  the  Banks  "  ;  sometimes 
in  "the  glassy  steaming  seas  and  on  the  feverish  coast 
of  the  Bight";  sometimes  it  was  "a  point  or  two 
norr'ard  of  the  Owers  light" — but  it  was  always  terrible, 
graphic,  and  a  lie. 

This  habit,  as  it  became  his  unique  preoccupation, 
cost  him  not  a  little.  He  lost  his  old  friends  who  had 
seen  his  slight  adventure,  and  he  wasted  much  time  in 
spinning  these  yarns,  and  much  money  in  buying  books 
of  derring-do  and  wild  'scapes  at  sea.     He  loved  those 


THE   SHORT  STORY  67 

who  believed  his  stories  to  be  true,  and  shocked  the  rare 
minds  that  seemed  to  catch  in  them  a  suspicion  of 
exaggeration.  He  could  not  long  frequent  the  same 
society,  and  he  strained  his  mind  a  little  out  of  shape 
by  the  perpetual  necessity  of  creative  effort.  None  the 
less,  I  think  that,  on  the  whole,  he  gained.  It  made 
him  an  artist :  he  saw  great  visions  of  heaving  waters  at 
night ;  he  really  had,  in  fancy,  faced  death  in  a  terrible 
form,  and  this  gave  him  a  singular  courage  in  his  last 
moments.  He  said  to  the  doctor,  with  a  slight  calm 
smile,  '  *  Tell  me  the  worst ;  I  have  been  through  things 
far  more  terrifying  than  this";  and  when  he  was 
offered  consolation  by  his  weeping  friends,  he  told  them 
that  ' '  no  petty  phrases  of  ritual  devotion  were  needed  to 
soothe  a  man  who  had  been  face  to  face  with  Nature  in 
her  wildest  moods."  So  he  died,  comforted  by  his 
illusion,  and  for  some  days  after  the  funeral  his  sister 
would  hold  him  up  to  his  only  and  favourite  nephew  as 
an  example  of  a  high  and  strenuous  life  lived  with 
courage,  and  ended  in  heroic  quiet.  Then  they  all  went 
to  hear  the  will  read. 

But  the  will  was  the  greatest  surprise  of  all.  For  it 
opened  with  these  words  : 

"  Having  some  experience  of  the  perils  they  suffer  that  go 
down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  and  of  the  blessedness  of  unex- 
pected relief  and  rescue,  I,  John  Curtail  Thorpe,  humbly  and 
gratefully  reminiscent  of  my  own  wonderful  and  miraculous 
snatching  from  the  jaws  of  death  .  .  ." 

And  it  went  on  to  leave  the  whole  property  (including 
the  little  place  in  Surrey),  in  all  (after  Sir  William 
Vernon  Harcourt's  death  duties  had  been  paid)  some 
jC^9>331  6s.  3d.  to  the  Lifeboat  Fund,  which  badly 


68  THE  AFTERMATH 

needed  it.  Nor  was  there  any  modifying  codicil  but 
one,  whereby  the  sum  of  ;,^i,ooo,  free  of  duty,  was  left 
to  Sylvester  Sarassin,  a  poetic  and  long-haired  young 
man,  who  had  for  years  attended  to  his  tales  with 
reverent  attention,  and  who  had,  indeed,  drawn  up,  or 
"  Englished  "  (as  he  called  it),  the  remarkable  will  of 
the  testator. 

Many  other  things  that  followed  this,  the  law-suit, 
the  quarrel  of  the  nephew  with  Sarassin,  and  so  forth, 
I  would  relate  had  I  the  space  or  you  the  patience. 
But  it  grows  late ;  the  oil  in  the  bulb  is  exhausted.  The 
stars,  which  (in  the  beautiful  words  of  Theocritus) 
"  tremble  and  always  follow  the  quiet  wheels  of  the 
night,"  warn  me  that  it  is  morning.     Farewell. 


IV 
THE  SHORT  LYRIC 

Many  Guides  to  Literature  give  no  rules  for  the  manu- 
facture of  short  lyrics,  and  nearly  all  of  them  omit  to 
furnish  the  student  with  an  example  of  this  kind  of 
composition. 

The  cause  of  this  unfortunate  neglect  (as  I  deem  it) 
is  not  far  to  seek.  Indeed  in  one  Textbook  (Mrs. 
Railston's  Book  for  Beginners.  Patteson.  12s.  6d.) 
it  is  set  down  in  so  many  words.  "  The  Short  Lyric," 
says  Mrs.  Railston  in  her  preface,  "  is  practically  inno- 
cent of  pecuniary  value.  Its  construction  should  be 
regarded  as  a  pastime  rather  than  as  serious  exercise ; 
and  even  for  the  purposes  of  recreation,  its  fabrication 
is  more  suited  to  the  leisure  of  a  monied  old  age  than  to 
the  struggle  of  eager  youth,  or  the  full  energies  of  a 
strenuous  manhood  "  (p.  34). 

The  judgment  here  pronounced  is  surely  erroneous. 
The  short  Lyric  is  indeed  not  very  saleable  (though 
there  are  exceptions  even  to  that  rule — the  first  Lord 
Tennyson  is  said  to  have  received  ;^20o  for  The 
Throstle) ;  it  is  (I  say)  not  very  saleable,  but  it  is  of 
great  indirect  value  to  the  writer,  especially  in  early 
youth.  A  reputation  can  be  based  upon  a  book  of  short 
lyrics  which  will  in  time  procure  for  its  author  Review^ 
ing    work    upon    several    newspapers,    and    sometimes, 

69 


70  THE  AFTERMATH 

towards  his  fortieth  year,  the  editorship  of  a  magazine ; 
later  in  life  it  will  often  lead  to  a  pension,  to  the 
command  of  an  army  corps,  or  even  to  the  governorship 
of  a  colony. 

I  feel,  therefore,  no  hesitation  in  describing  at  some 
length  the  full  process  of  its  production,  or  in  presenting 
to  the  student  a  careful  plan  of  the  difficulties  which  will 
meet  him  at  the  outset. 

To  form  a  proper  appreciation  of  these  last,  it  is 
necessary  to  grasp  the  fundamental  fact  that  they  all 
proceed  from  the  inability  of  busy  editors  and  readers 
to  judge  the  quality  of  verse;  hence  the  rebuffs  and 
delays  that  so  often  overcast  the  glorious  morning  of 
the  Poetic  Soul. 

At  the  risk  of  some  tedium — for  the  full  story  is  of 
considerable  length — I  will  show  what  is  their  nature 
and  effect,  in  the  shape  of  a  relation  of  what  happened 
to  Mr.  Peter  Gurney  some  years  ago,  before  he  became 
famous. 

Mr.  Peter  Gurney  (I  may  say  it  without  boasting)  is 
one  of  my  most  intimate  friends.  He  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  brilliant  of  that  brilliant  group  of  young  poets 
which  includes  Mr.  John  Stewart,  Mr.  Henry  Hawk, 
etc.,  and  which  is  known  as  the  "  Cobbley  school," 
from  the  fact  that  their  historic  meeting-ground  was  the 
house  of  Mr.  Thomas  Cobbley,  himself  no  mean  poet, 
but  especially  a  creative,  seminal  critic,  and  uncle  of 
Mr.  Gurney.     But  to  my  example  and  lesson  : 

Mr.  Gurney  was  living  in  those  days  in  Bloomsbury, 
and  was  occupied  in  reading  for  the  bar. 

He  was  by  nature  slothful  and  unready,  as  is  indeed 
the  sad  habit  of  literary  genius ;  he  rose  late,  slept  long. 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  71 

eat  heartily,  drank  deeply,  read  newspapers,  began 
things  he  never  finished,  and  wrote  the  ending  of  things 
whose  beginnings  he  never  accomplished ;  in  a  word,  he 
was  in  every  respect  the  man  of  letters.  He  looked 
back  continually  at  the  stuff  he  had  written  quite  a  short 
time  before,  and  it  always  made  him  hesitate  in  his 
opinion  of  what  he  was  actually  engaged  in.  It  was 
but  six  months  before  the  events  herein  set  down  that  he 
had  written — 

"  The  keep  of  the  unconquerable  mind  " — 

only  to  discover  that  it  was  clap-trap  and  stolen  from 
Wordsworth  at  that.  How,  then,  could  he  dare  send 
off  the  sonnet — 

"  If  all  intent  of  unsubstantial  art  " — 

and  perhaps  get  it  printed  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  or 
the  North  American  Review,  when  (for  all  he  knew)  it 
might  really  be  very  poor  verse  indeed  ? 

These  two  things,  then,  his  sloth  and  his  hesitation  in 
criticism,  prevented  Peter  from  sending  out  as  much  as 
he  should  have  done.  But  one  fine  day  of  last  summer, 
a  kind  of  music  passed  into  him  from  universal  nature, 
and  he  sat  down  and  wrote  these  remarkable  lines  : 

"  He  is  not  dead ;  the  leaders  do  not  die, 
But  rather,  lapt  in  immemorial  ease 
Of  merit  consummate,  they  passing,  stand; 
And  rapt  from  rude  reality,  remain ; 
And  in  the  flux  and  eddy  of  time,  are  still. 
Therefore  I  call  it  consecrated  sand 
Wherein  they  left  their  prints,  nor  overgrieve ; 
An  heir  of  English  earth  let  English  earth  receive." 


72  THE  AFTERMATH 

He  had  heard  that  Culture  of  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A., 
paid  more  for  verse  than  any  other  review,  so  he  sent  it 
off  to  that  address,  accompanied  by  a  very  earnest  little 
letter,  calling  the  gem  "  Immortality,"  and  waiting  for 
the  answer. 

The  editor  of  Culture  is  a  businesslike  man,  who 
reads  his  English  mail  on  the  quay  at  New  York,  and 
takes  stamped  envelopes  and  rejection  forms  down  with 
him  to  the  steamers. 

He  looked  up  Peter's  name  in  the  Red  Book,  Who's 
Who,  Burke,  the  Court  Guide,  and  what  not,  and  find- 
ing it  absent  from  all  these,  he  took  it  for  granted  that 
there  was  no  necessity  for  any  special  courtesies ;  Peter 
therefore,  fifteen  days  after  sending  off  his  poem,  received 
an  envelope  whose  stamp  illustrated  the  conquest  of  the 
Philippines  by  an  Armed  Liberty,  while  in  the  top  left- 
hand  corner  were  printed  these  simple  words  :  "  If  not 
delivered  within  three  days,  please  return  to  Box  257, 
Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A." 

He  was  very  pleased  to  get  this  letter.  It  was  the 
first  reply  he  had  ever  got  from  an  editor,  and  he  took 
it  up  unopened  to  the  Holborn,  to  read  it  during  lunch. 
But  there  was  very  little  to  read.  The  original  verse 
had  folded  round  it  a  nice  half -sheet  of  cream-laid 
notepaper,  with  a  gold  fleur  de  lis  in  the  corner,  and 
underneath  the  motto,  "Devoir  Fera " ;  then,  in  the 
middle  of  the  sheet,  three  or  four  lines  of  fine  copper- 
plate engraving,  printed  also  in  gold,  and  running  as 
follows  : 

"  The  editor  of  Culture  regrets  that  he  is  unable  to  accept 
the  enclosed  contribution  ;  it  must  not  be  imagined  that  any 
adverse  criticism  or  suggestion   is  thereby  passed  upon  the 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  73 

work ;  pressure  of  space,  the  previous  acceptation  of  similar 
matter,  and  other  causes  having  necessarily  to  be  con- 
sidered." 

Peter  was  so  much  encouraged  by  this,  that  he  sent 
his  verses  at  once  to  Mr.  McGregor,  changing,  however, 
the  word  "  rude  "  in  the  fourth  line  to  "  rough,"  and 
adding  a  comma  after  "rapt,"  points  insignificant  in 
themselves  perhaps,  but  indicative  of  a  critic's  ear,  and 
certain  (as  he  thought)  to  catch  the  approval  of  the 
distinguished  scholar.  In  twenty-four  hours  he  got  his 
reply  in  the  shape  of  an  affectionate  letter,  enclosing 
his  MSS.  : 

"  My  dear  Petek, 

"No;  I  should  be  doing  an  injustice  to  my  readers 
if  I  were  to  print  your  verse  in  the  Doctrinaire ;  but  you 
must  not  be  discouraged  by  this  action  on  my  part.  You  are 
still  very  young,  and  no  one  who  has  followed  (as  you  may 
be  sure  I  have)  your  brilliant  career  at  the  University  can 
doubt  your  ultimate  success  in  whatever  profession  you  under- 
take. But  the  path  of  letters  is  a  stony  one,  and  the  level  of 
general  utility  in  such  work  is  only  reached  by  the  most 
arduous  efforts.  I  saw  your  Aunt  Phoebe  the  other  day,  and 
she  was  warm  in  your  praises.  She  told  me  you  were  think- 
ing of  becoming  an  architect;  I  sincerely  hope  you  will,  for 
I  believe  you  have  every  aptitude  for  that  profession.  Plod 
on  steadily  and  I  wiU  go  warrant  for  your  writing  verse  with 
the  best  of  them.  It  is  inevitable,  my  dear  Peter,  that  one's 
early  verse  should  be  imitative  and  weak ;  but  you  have  the 
'  inner  voice,'  do  but  foUow  the  gleam  and  never  allow  your 
first  enthusiasms  to  grow  dim. 

"  Always  your  Father's  Old  Friend, 

"  Archibald  Wellington  McGregor." 

Peter  was  a  little  pained  by  this ;  but  he  answered  it 
very  politely,  inviting  himself  to  lunch  on  the  following 
Thursflay,  and  then,  turning  to  his  verses,  he  gave  the 


74  THE  AFTERMATH 

title  "  Dead,"  .and  sent  them  to  the  Patriot,  from  whom 
he  got  no  reply  for  a  month. 

He  then  wrote  to  the  editor  of  the  Patriot  on  a  post- 
card, and  said  that,  in  view  of  the  present  deplorable 
reaction  in  politics,  he  feared  the  verses,  if  they  were 
held  over  much  longer,  would  lose  their  point.  Would 
the  Patriot  be  so  kind,  then,  as  to  let  him  know  what 
they  proposed  to  do  with  the  Poem? 

He  got  a  reply  the  same  evening  : 

"  Telephone  239.  "  36A,  Clare  Market, 

"  Telegrafh,  '  Vindex.'  "  W.C. 

"  Dr.  Sir, 

"  Your  estd.  favour  to  hand.  No  stamp  being  enclosed 
with  verses,  we  have  retained  same,  but  will  forward  on 
receipt  of  two  stamps,  including  cost  of  this. 

"  Faithfully  yrs., 

"  Alphonse  Riphraim. 

"  Please  note  change  of  address." 

By  this  Peter  Gurney  was  so  angered,  that  he  walked 
straight  over  to  his  club,  rang  up  No.  239,  and  told  the 
editor  of  the  Patriot,  personally,  by  word  of  mouth, 
and  with  emphasis,  that  he  was  a  Pro-Boer;  then  he 
rang  off  before  that  astonished  foreigner  had  time  to 
reply. 

But  men  of  Mr.  Peter  Gurney 's  stamp  are  not  cast 
down  by  these  reverses.  He  remembered  one  rather  low 
and  insignificant  sheet  called  the  Emfire,  in  which  a 
vast  number  of  unknown  names  had  been  appearing  at 
the  bottom  of  ballads,  sonnets,  and  so  forth,  dealing 
mainly  with  the  foreign  policy  of  Great  Britain,  to 
which  country  (as  being  their  native  land)  the  writers 
were  apparently  warmly  attached. 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  75 

Peter  Gurney  flattered  himself  that  he  understood  why 
the  Empire  made  a  speciality  of  beginners.  It  was  a 
new  paper  with  little  capital,  and  thought  (wisely 
enough)  that  if  it  printed  many  such  juvenilia  it  would, 
among  the  lot,  strike  some  vein  of  good  verse.  He  had 
heard  of  such  ventures  in  journalism,  and  remembered 
being  told  that  certain  sonnets  of  Mr.  Lewis  Morris,  and 
even  the  earlier  poems  of  Tennyson,  were  thus  buried 
away  in  old  magazines.  He  copied  out  his  verses  once 
more,  gave  them  the  new  title  "  Aspiro,"  and  sent  them 
to  the  Empire.     He  got  a  very  polite  letter  in  reply  : 

"  Dear  Mr. , 

"  I  have  read  your  verses  with  much  pleasure,  and  see 
by  them  that  the  praise  I  have  heard  on  all  sides  of  your 
unpublished  work  was  not  unmerited.  Unfortunately,  the 
Em-pire  cannot  afford  to  pay  anything  for  its  verse;  and  so 
large  has  been  the  demand  upon  our  space,  that  we  have  been 
compelled  to  make  it  a  rule  that  aU  contributions  of  this 
nature  should  pay  a  slight  premium  to  obtain  a  space  in  our 
columns.  But  for  this  it  would  be  impossible  to  distinguish 
between  competitors  without  the  risk  of  heartburnings  and 
petty  jealousies.  We  enclose  our  scale  of  charges,  which  are 
(as  you  see),  purely  nominal,  and  remain,  awaiting  your 
order  to  print, 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  William   Power." 

I  need  hardly  tell  you  that  Peter,  on  receiving  this 
letter,  put  two  farthings  into  an  envelope  addressed  to 
William  Power,  and  was  careful  not  to  register  or 
stamp  it. 

As  for  his  Poem,  he  changed  the  title  to  "  They 
Live  !"  and  sent  it  to  the  editor  of  Criticism.  Next  day 
he  was  not  a  little  astonished  to  get  his  verses  back, 
folded  up  in  the  following  waggish  letter : 


^e  THE  AFTERMATH 

"  The  Laurels, 

"  20,  Poplar  Grove, 
"  S.W. 
"  Monday,  the  21st  of  April. 

"  Sir, 
"  I  am  directed  by  the  editor 
To  say  that  lack  of  space  and  press  of  matter 
Forbid  his  using  your  delightful  verses, 
Which,  therefore,  he  returns.     Believe  me  still 
Very  sincerely  yours,  Nathaniel  Pickersgill." 

Now  not  a  little  disconsolate,  young  Mr.  Gurney 
went  out  into  the  street,  and  thought  of  Shavings  as  a 
last  chance.  Shavings  gave  a  guinea  to  the  best  poem 
on  a  given  subject,  and  printed  some  of  the  others  sent 
in.  This  week  he  remembered  the  subject  was  a  eulogy 
of  General  Whitelock.  He  did  not  hesitate,  therefore, 
to  recast  his  poem,  and  to  call  it  a  "Threnody"  on 
that  commander,  neglecting,  by  a  poetic  fiction,  the  fact 
that  he  was  alive,  and  even  looking  well  after  his  eight 
months  of  hard  work  against  the  Warra-Muggas.  He 
went  into  the  great  buildings  where  Shavings  is  edited, 
and  saw  a  young  man  opening  with  immense  rapidity  a 
hand-barrowful  of  letters,  while  a  second  sorted  them 
with  the  speed  of  lightning,  and  a  third  tied  them  into 
neat  bundles  of  five  hundred  each,  and  placed  them  in 
pigeon-holes  under  their  respective  initial  letters. 

"Pray,  sir,"  said  Peter  to  the  first  of  these  three 
men,  "what  are  you  doing?"  "I  am,"  replied  the 
fimctionary,  "just  finishing  my  week's  work"  (for  it 
was  a  Saturday  morning),  "  and  in  the  course  of  these 
four  hours  alone  I  am  proud  to  say  that  I  have  opened 
no  less  than  seven  thousand  three  hundred  and  two 
poems  on  our  great  Leader,   some  of  which,   indeed, 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  77 

have  been  drawn  from  the  principal  English  poets,  but 
the  greater  part  of  which  are,  I  am  glad  to  say, 
original." 

Embittered  by  such  an  experience,  my  friend  Gurney 
returned  to  his  home,  and  wrote  that  same  afternoon  the 
Satire  on  Modern  Literature,  in  which  he  introduces  his 
own  verses  as  an  example  and  warning,  and  on  which, 
as  all  the  world  knows,  his  present  fame  reposes. 

To-day  everyone  who  reads  these  lines  is  envious  of 
Mr.  Peter  Gurney 's  fame.  He  is  the  leader  of  the 
whole  Cobbley  school,  the  master  of  his  own  cousin, 
Mr.  Peter  Davey,  and  without  question  the  model  upon 
which  Mr.  Henry  Hawk,  Mr.  Daniel  Witton,  and  Mr. 
John  Stuart  have  framed  their  poetic  manner.  He 
suffered  and  was  strong.  He  condescended  to  prose, 
and  kept  his  verse  in  reserve.  The  result  no  poet  can 
ignore. 

I  should  but  mislead  the  student  were  I  to  pretend 
that  Mr.  Peter  Gurney  achieved  his  present  reputation — 
a  reputation  perhaps  somewhat  exaggerated,  but  based 
upon  real  merit  and  industry — by  any  spontaneous  effort. 
Hard,  regular,  unflinching  labour  in  this,  as  in  every 
other  profession,  is  the  condition  of  success.  But  the 
beginner  may  say  (and  with  justice),  "It  is  not  enough 
to  tell  me  to  work;  how  should  I  set  about  it?  What 
rules  should  I  follow?"  Let  me  pursue  my  invariable 
custom,  and  set  down  in  the  simplest  and  most  methodical 
form  the  elements  of  the  Short  Lyric. 

The  student  will,  at  some  time  or  another,  have 
suffered  strong  emotions.  He  will  have  desired  to  give 
them  metrical  form.  He  will  have  done  so — and  com- 
monly he  will  have  gone  no  farther.     I  have  before  me 


78  THE  AFTERMATH 

as  I  write  a  verse,  the  opening  of  one  of  the  most  unsuc- 
cessful poems  ever  written.    It  runs  : 

"  I  am  not  as  my  fathers  were, 
I  cannot  pass  from  sleep  to  sleep, 
Or  live  content  to  drink  the  deep 
Contentment  of  the  common  air." 

This  is  very  bad.  It  is  bad  because  it  proceeded 
from  a  deep  emotion  only,  and  shot  out  untrammelled. 
It  has  no  connection  with  verse  as  an  art,  and  yet  that 
art  lies  open  for  any  young  man  who  will  be  patient  and 
humble,  and  who  will  learn. 

His  first  business  is  to  decide  at  once  between  the 
only  two  styles  possible  in  manufactured  verse,  the 
Obscure  and  the  Prattling.  I  say  "  the  only  two  styles  " 
because  I  don't  think  you  can  tackle  the  Grandiose,  and 
I  am  quite  certain  you  couldn't  manage  the  Satiric.  I 
know  a  young  man  in  Red  Lion  Square  who  can  do  the 
Grandiose  very  well,  and  I  am  going  to  boom  him 
when  I  think  the  time  has  come;  but  the  Student- 
in-Ordinary  cannot  do  it,  so  he  may  put  it  out  of  his 
head. 

I  will  take  the  Simple  or  Prattling  style  first.  Choose 
a  subject  from  out  of  doors,  first  because  it  is  the 
fashion,  and  secondly  because  you  can  go  and  observe 
it  closely.  For  you  must  know  that  manufactured  verse 
is  very  like  drawing,  and  in  both  arts  you  have  to  take  a 
model  and  be  careful  of  details.  Let  us  take  {e.g.) 
a  Pimpernel. 

A  Pimpernel  is  quite  easy  to  write  about ;  it  has 
remarkable  habits,  it  is  not  gross  or  common.  It  would 
be  much  harder  to  write  about  grass,  for  instance,  or 
parsley. 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  79 

First  you  write  down  anything  that  occurs  to  you, 
like  this  : 

"  Pretty  little  Pimpernel, 
May  I  learn  to  love  you  well?" 

You  continue  on  the  style  of  "Twinkle,  twinkle." 

"  Hiding  in  the  mossy  shade, 
Like  a  lamp  of  —  \j  made, 
Or  a  gem  by  fairies  dropt 
In  their  .   .  ." 

and  there  you  stick,  just  as  you  had  got  into  the  style  of 
the  "L'Allegro."  I  have  no  space  or  leisure  to  give 
the  student  the  full  treatment  of  so  great  a  subject,  how 
he  would  drag  in  the  closing  and  opening  of  the  flower, 
and  how  (skilfully  avoiding  the  word  "  dell  ")  he  would 
end  his  ten  or  fifteen  lines  by  a  repetition  of  the  first  (an 
essential  feature  of  the  Prattling  style).  I  will  confine 
myself  to  showing  him  what  may  be  made  of  these 
ridiculous  six  lines. 

The  first  has  an  obvious  fault.  It  runs  too  quickly, 
and  one  falls  all  over  it.  We  will  keep  "Little" 
and  put  it  first,  so  one  might  write  "  Little  Purple 
Pimpernel."  But  even  that  won't  do,  though  the 
alliteration  is  well  enough.    What  change  can  we  make  ? 

It  is  at  this  point  that  I  must  introduce  you  to  a  most 
perfect  principle.  It  is  called  the  Mutation  of  Adjec- 
tives— it  is  almost  the  whole  art  of  Occ.  verse.  This 
principle  consists  in  pulling  out  one's  first  obvious 
adjective,  and  replacing  it  by  another  of  similar  length, 
chosen  because  it  is  -peculiar.  You  must  not  put  in  an 
adjective  that  could  not  possibly  apply;  for  instance, 
you  must  not  speak  of  the  "  Ponderous  Rabbit  "  or  th^ 


8o  THE  AFTERMATH 

"Murky  Beasts";  your  adjective  must  be  applicable, 
but  it  must  be  startling,  as  "  The  Tolerant  Cow,"  "  The 
Stammering  Minister,"  or  "The  Greasy  Hill" — all 
quite  true  and  most  unexpected. 

Now,  here  it  is  evident  that  Purple  is  commonplace. 
What  else  can  we  find  about  the  Pimpernel  that  is  quite 
true  and  yet  really  startling  ?  Let  us  (for  instance)  call 
it  "  tasteless."  There  you  have  it,  "  Little  tasteless 
Pimpernel  " — no  one  could  read  that  too  quickly,  and 
it  shows  at  the  same  time  great  knowledge  of  nature. 

I  will  not  weary  you  with  every  detail  of  the  process, 
but  I  will  write  down  my  result  after  all  the  rules  have 
been  properly  attended  to.  Read  this,  and  see  whether 
the  lines  do  not  fit  with  my  canons  of  art,  especially  in 
what  is  called  the  ' '  choice  of  words  ' '  : 

"  Little  tasteless  Pimpernel, 

Shepherd's  Holt  and  warning  spell 
Crouching  in  the  cushat  shade 
Like  a  mond  of  mowry  made.  ..." 

and  so  forth.  There  you  have  a  perfect  little  gem. 
Nearly  all  the  words  are  curious  and  well  chosen,  and 
yet  the  metre  trips  along  like  a  railway  carriage.  The 
simplicity  lies  in  the  method ;  the  quaint  diction  is 
quarried  from  Mr.  Skeats'  excellent  book  on  etymology ; 
but  I  need  not  point  out  any  particular  work,  as 
your  "  Thesaurus  "  in  this  matter  is  for  your  own 
choosing. 

So  much  for  the  Prattling  style. 

As  for  the  Obscure  style,  it  is  so  easy  that  it  is 
getting  overdone,  and  I  would  not  depend  too  much 
upon  it. 

In  its  origins,   it  was  due  to  the  vagaries  of  some 


THE   SHORT  LYRIC  81 

gentlemen  and  ladies  who  suffered  from  an  imperfect 
education,  and  wrote  as  they  felt,  without  stopping  to 
think. 

But  that  first  holy  rapture  cannot  be  recovered.  We 
must  work  by  rule.  The  rules  attaching  to  this  kind  of 
work  are  six  : 

(i)  Put  the  verb  in  the  wrong  place  (some  leave  it 
out  altogether) ; 

(2)  Use  words  that  may  be  either  verbs  or  nouns — 
plurals  are  very  useful ; 

(3)  Punctuate  insufficiently ; 

(4)  Make  a  special  use  of  phrases  that  have  two  or 
three  meanings ; 

(5)  Leave  out  relatives ; 

(6)  Have  whole  sentences  in  apposition. 

Some  of  our  young  poets  have  imagined  that  the  mere 
use  of  strange  words  made  up  the  Obscure  style.  I 
need  not  say  that  they  were  wrong.     Thus,  the  lines — 

"  And  shall  I  never  tread  them  more, 
My  murrant  balks  of  wealden  lathes?" 

are  singularly  bad.  Anyone  could  be  obscure  in  so 
simple  a  fashion.  It  behoves  the  student  rather  to  read 
carefully  such  lines  as  the  following,  in  which  I  have 
again  tackled  the  Pimpernel,  this  time  in  the  Obscure 
manner. 

I  begin  with  "  What  Pimpernels,"  which  might  mean 
"What!  Pimpernels?"  or,  ''What  Pimpernels?"  or 
again,  "What  PimfernelsP'  -,  expressing  surprise,  or 
a  question,  or  astonished  admiration  :  but  do  you  think 
I  am  going  to  give  the  show  away  by  telling  the  reader 
what  I  mean?    Not  a  bit  of  it.     There  is  something  in 

6 


82  THE  AFTERMATH 

our  island  temper  which  loyes  mystery  :  something  of 
the  North.    I  flatter  myself  I  can  do  it  thoroughly  : 

"What  Pimpernels;  a  rare  indulgence  blesses 
The  winter  wasting  in  imperfect  suns 
And  Pimpernels  are  in  the  waning,  runs 
A  hand  unknown  the  careless  winter  dresses, 
Not  for  your  largess  to  the  ruined  fells, 
Her  floors'  in  waste,  I  call  you.  Pimpernels." 

There  !  I  think  that  will  do  very  fairly  well.  One 
can  make  sense  out  of  it,  and  it  is  broad  and  full,  like 
a  modern  religion ;  it  has  many  aspects,  and  it  makes 
men  think.  There  is  not  one  unusual  word,  and  the 
second  line  is  a  clear  and  perfect  bit  of  English.  Yet 
how  deep  and  solemn  and  thorough  is  the  whole  ! 

And  yet,  for  all  my  ability  in  these  matters,  I  may 
not  offer  an  example  for  the  reader  to  follow.  I  am 
conscious  of  something  more  powerful  (within  this  strict 
channel),  and  I  am  haunted  reproachfully  by  a  great 
soul.  May  I  quote  what  none  but  She  could  have 
written?  It  is  the  most  perfect  thing  that  modern 
England  knows.  Every  lesson  I  might  painfully  convey 
there  stands  manifest,  of  itself,  part  of  the  Created 
Thing. 

THE   YELLOW   MUSTARD 

Oh  !  ye  that  prink  it  to  and  fro, 
In  pointed  flounce  and  furbelow, 
What  have  ye  known,  what  can  ye  know 
That  have  not  seen  the  mustard  grow? 

The  yellow  mustard  is  no  less 
Than  God's  good  gift  to  loneliness; 
And  he  was  sent  in  gorgeous  press, 
To  jangle  keys  at  my  distress. 


THE  SHORT  LYRIC  83 

I  heard  the  throstle  call  again 
Come  hither,  Pain  !  come  hither,  Pain  ! 
Till  all  my  shameless  feet  were  fain 
To  wander  through  the  summer  rain. 

And  far  apart  from  human  place, 
And  flaming  like  a  vast  disgrace. 
There  struck  me  blinding  in  the  face 
The  livery  of  the  mustard  race. 


To  see  the  yellow  mustard  grow 
Beyond  the  town,  above,  below ; 
Beyond  the  purple  houses,  oh  ! 
To  see  the  yellow  mustard  grow  ! 


V 

THE  INTERVIEW 

It  is  now  some  years  ago  since  I  was  sitting  in  Mr. 
Caliban's  study,  writing  in  his  name  upon  the  Balance 
of  Power  in  Europe.  I  had  just  completed  my  article, 
and  passed  it  to  him  to  sign,  when  I  noticed  that  he  was 
too  much  absorbed  in  a  book  which  he  was  reading  to 
pay  attention  to  my  gesture. 

Men  of  his  stamp  enforce  courtesy  in  others  by  their 
mere  presence.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  have 
disturbed  him.  I  turned  to  a  somewhat  more  lengthy 
composition,  which  was  also  to  appear  above  his  signa- 
ture, entitled,  "  The  Effect  of  Greek  Philosophy  upon 
European  Thought."  When  I  had  completed  my 
analysis  of  this  profound  historical  influence,  I  thought 
that  my  master  and  guide  would  have  freed  himself 
from  the  net  of  the  author  who  thus  entranced  him.  I 
was  mistaken.  I  had,  however,  but  just  begun  a  third 
article,  of  which  the  subject  escapes  me,  when  he  turned 
to  me  and  said,  closing  the  book  between  his  hands  : 

"  Will  you  go  and  interview  someone  for  me?" 

I  fear  my  sudden  change  of  expression  betrayed  the 
fact  that  the  idea  was  repugnant  to  one  familiar  rather 
with  foreign  politics  and  with  the  Classics  than  with  the 
reporters'  side  of  the  paper. 

Mr.  Caliban  looked  at  my  collar  with  his  kindly  eyes, 
and  kept  them  fixed  upon  it  for  some  seconds.  He  then 
smiled    (if   such   a  man  could   be  said   to  smile)   and 

continued  i 

84 


THE  INTERVIEW  85 

"  I  want  to  tell  you  something  ..." 

There  was  profound  silence  for  a  little  while,  during 
which  a  number  of  thoughts  passed  through  my  mind. 
I  remembered  that  Dr.  Caliban  was  Editor  at  that 
moment  of  the  Sunday  Herald.  I  remembered  that  I 
was  his  right  hand,  and  that  without  me  the  enormous 
labour  he  weekly  undertook  could  never  have  been 
accomplished  without  trespassing  upon  the  sanctity  of 
the  Sabbath.  After  a  little  hesitation,  he  pulled  down 
his  waistcoat,  hitched  his  trousers  at  the  knees,  crossed 
his  legs,  made  a  half-turn  towards  me  (for  his  study- 
chair  was  mounted  upon  a  swivel),  and  said  : 

"It's  like  this  .   .   .   ." 

I  assured  him  that  I  would  do  what  he  wished,  for  I 
knew,  whenever  he  spoke  in  this  tone,  that  there  was 
something  to  be  done  for  England. 

"It's  like  this,"  he  went  on,  "I  have  found  a  man 
here  who  should  count,  who  should  tell.  It  is  a  fearful 
thought  that  such  a  mind  can  have  remained  so  long 
hidden.  Here  is  a  man  with  something  in  him  quite 
peculiar  and  apart — and  he  is  unknown  !  It  is  England 
through  and  through,  and  the  best  of  England;  it  is 
more  than  that.  Even  where  I  disagree  with  him,  I  find 
something  like  a  living  voice.  He  gets  right  at  one,  as 
it  were  .   .   .   yet  I  never  heard  his  name  !" 

Here  Mr.  Caliban,  having  stopped  for  a  moment,  as 
though  seeking  something  in  his  memory,  declaimed  in 
a  rich  monotone  : 

"  Full  many  a  gem  of  purest  ray  serene 
The  dark  unfathomed  caves  of  ocean  bear  : 
Full  many  a  flower  is  born  to  blush  unseen 
And  waste  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air." 


86  THE  AFTERMATH 

There  was  a  little  silence.    Then  he  said  abruptly  : 
"  Do  you  know  Wordsworth's  definition  of  a  poet? 
Take  it  down.     I  should  like  you  to  use  it." 

I  pulled  out  my  notebook  and  wrote  in  shorthand  from 
his  dictation  a  sublime  phrase,  which  was  new  to  me  : 
' '  A  Poet  is  a  man  speaking  to  men.  ' ' 

"This  man,"  said  Dr.  Caliban  simply,  "is  a  man 
speaking  to  men." 

He  put  the  book  into  my  hands ;  two  or  three  of  the 
leaves  were  turned  down,  and  on  each  page  so  marked 
was  a  passage  scored  in  pencil.  The  lines  would  have 
arrested  my  eye,  even  had  a  greater  mind  than  my  own 
not  selected  them. 

"4  woman  is  only  a  woman,  but  a  good  cigar  is  a 
smoke. ^^ 

"  Tied  wrist  to  bar  for  their  red  iniquitee.^^ 
"  To  do  butcher  work  ' '  (he  is  speaking  of  war)  ' '  yer 
don't  want  gentlemen,  'cept  to  lead." 

"  I  got  the  gun-barrels  red-hot  and  fetched  the  whip- 
cord out  of  the  cupboard,  while  the  other  man  held  the 
screaming,  writhing  thing  down  upon  the  -floor." 

"  Under  whose  (speaking  of  God)  awful  hand  we 
hold  dominion  over  palm  and  pine." 

I  have  no  space  to  quote  a  longer  passage  of  verse, 
evidently  intended  to  be  sung  to  a  banjo,  and  describing 
the  emotions  of  the  author  in  a  fit  of  delirium  tremens 
when  he  suffered  from  the  hallucination  that  a  red-hot 
brass  monkey  was  himself  attempting  song.  The  poet 
showed  no  jealousy  of  the  animal.  There  was  the  full, 
hearty  Anglo-Saxon  friendship  for  a  comrade  and  even 
for  a  rival,  and  I  met  the  same  tone  again  on  a  further 
page  in  the  line  : 


THE  INTERVIEW  87 

"  You're  a  better  man  than  I  am,  Gunga  Din." 

I  looked  up  at  Mr.  Caliban  and  said  : 

"Well?" — for  these  short  phrases  are  often  the 
most  emphatic. 

"Well,"  said  Dr.  Caliban,  "that  man  must  not  be 
allowed  to  go  under.  He  must  be  made,  and  we  must 
make  him." 

I  said  that  such  a  man  could  not  fail  to  pierce  through 
and  conquer.  He  seemed  the  very  salt  and  marrow  of 
all  that  has  made  us  great. 

Dr.  Caliban  laid  his  hand  in  a  fatherly  way  upon  my 
shoulder  and  said  : 

"You  are  still  yoimg ;  you  do  not  know  how  long 
fame  may  take  to  find  a  man,  if  the  way  is  not  pointed 
out  to  her ;  and  if  she  takes  too  long,  sometimes  he  dies 
of  a  broken  heart." 

It  was  a  noble  thought  in  one  who  had  known  Fame 
almost  from  the  very  day  when,  as  a  lad  of  22  years  old, 
he  had  stood  up  in  the  chapel  at  Barking  Level  and 
answered  the  preacher  with  the  words,  "Lord,  here 
ami." 

Dr.  Caliban  continued  in  a  few  simple  words  to 
convince  me  that  my  foolish  pride  alone  stood  between 
this  young  genius  and  the  fame  he  deserved.  He  pointed 
out  what  a  weight  would  lie  upon  my  mind  were  that 
poet  some  day  to  become  famous,  and  to  be  able  to  say 
when  I  presented  myself  at  his  receptions  : 

"  Get  ye  hence  :  I  know  ye  not  !" 

He  added  the  awful  words  that  death  might  find  us 
at  any  moment,  and  that  then  we  should  have  to  answer, 
not  for  our  reasons  or  our  motives,  but  for  the  things  we 
have  done,  and  for  the  things  we  have  left  undone.    He 


88  THE  AFTERMATH 

added  that  he  would  regard  a  visit  to  this  new  writer  as 
overtime  work,  and  that  he  was  ready  to  pay  my  expenses, 
including  cab  fares  to  and  from  the  station.  He  ended 
with  an  appeal  which  would  have  convinced  one  less 
ready  to  yield  :  a  magnificent  picture  of  the  Empire  and 
of  the  Voice  for  which  it  had  waited  so  long. 
*  *  *  *  * 

It  seems  unworthy,  after  the  relation  of  this  intimate 
domestic  scene,  to  add  any  words  of  exhortation  to  the 
reader  and  student. 

I  will  not  pretend  that  the  interview  is  a  form  of  true 
literature.  If  I  have  been  guilty  of  too  great  a  con- 
fidence, my  excess  has  proceeded  from  an  earnest  desire 
to  watch  over  others  of  my  kind,  and  to  warn  them  lest 
by  one  chance  refusal  they  should  destroy  the  oppor- 
tunities of  a  lifetime. 

To  interview  another,  even  a  rival,  is  sometimes 
necessary  at  the  outset  of  a  career.  It  is  an  experience 
that  need  not  be  repeated.  It  is  one  that  no  earnest 
student  of  human  nature  will  regret. 

The  powerful  emotions  aroused  by  the  reminiscence 
of  Dr.  Caliban's  eloquence,  and  of  the  meeting  to  which 
it  led,  must  not  be  desecrated  by  too  lengthy  an  insist- 
ance  upon  the  mere  teclinique  of  a  subsidiary  branch  of 
modern  letters.  I  will  state  very  briefly  my  conclusions 
as  to  what  is  indispensable  in  the  regulation  of  this  kind 
of  literature. 

It  is,  in  the  first  place,  of  some  moment  that  the 
young  interviewer  should  take  his  hat  and  gloves  with 
him  in  his  left  hand  into  the  room.  If  he  carries  an 
umbrella  or  cane,  this  also  should  be  carried  in  the  same 
hand,    leaving   the   right    hand    completely    free.      Its 


THE  INTERVIEW  89 

readiness  for  every  purpose  is  the  mark  of  a  gentleman, 
and  the  maintenance  of  that  rank  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  the  sans  gene  which  should  accompany  a  true  inter- 
view. 

In  the  second  place,  let  him,  the  moment  he  appears, 
explain  briefly  the  object  of  his  visit.  Without  any  such 
introduction  as  "  The  fact  is  .  .  ."  "  It  is  very  odd, 
but  .  .  ."  let  him  say  plainly  and  simply,  like  an 
Englishman,  "  I  have  been  sent  to  interview  you  on  the 
part  of  such  and  such  a  paper." 

He  will  then  be  handed  (in  the  majority  of  cases)  a 
short  type-written  statement,  which  he  will  take  into  his 
right  hand,  pass  into  his  left,  in  among  the  gloves,  stick, 
hat,  etc.,  and  will  bow,  not  from  the  shoulders,  nor  from 
the  hips,  but  subtly  from  the  central  vertebrae. 

In  the  third  place  he  will  go  out  of  the  room. 

There  are  two  exceptions  to  this  general  procedure. 
The  first  is  with  men  quite  unknown;  the  second  with 
men  of  high  birth  or  great  wealth. 

In  the  first  case,  the  hat  and  gloves  should  be  laid 
upon  a  table  and  the  stick  leaning  against  it  in  such  a 
way  as  not  to  fall  down  awkwardly  in  the  middle  of  a 
conversation.  The  student  will  then  begin  to  talk  in 
a  genial  manner  loudly,  and  will  continue  for  about 
half -an-hour ;  he  will  end  by  looking  at  his  watch,  and 
will  go  away  and  write  down  what  he  feels  inclined. 

In  the  second  case,  he  will  do  exactly  the  same,  but 
with  a  different  result,  for  in  the  first  case  he  will  very 
probably  become  the  friend  of  the  person  interviewed, 
which  would  have  happened  anyhow,  and  in  the  second 
case  he  will  be  forbidden  the  house,  a  result  equally 
inevitable. 


90  THE  AFTERMATH 

I  cannot  conclude  these  remarks  without  exhorting  the 
young  writer  most  earnestly,  when  he  is  entering  upon 
the  first  of  these  distressing  experiences,  to  place  a  firm 
trust  in  Divine  Providence,  and  to  remember  that,  com^ 
what  may,  he  has  done  his  duty. 

If  he  should  have  any  further  hesitation  as  to  the 
general  manner  in  which  an  interview  should  be  written, 
he  has  but  to  read  what  follows.  It  constitutes  the 
interview  which  I  held  with  that  young  genius  whom 
Mr.  Caliban  persuaded  me  to  visit,  and  of  whose  fame 
I  shall  therefore  always  feel  myself  a  part. 


INTERVIEW 

WITH  HIM 

(Written  specially  for  the  Sunday  Englishman,  by  the 
Rev.   James   Caliban,   D.D.)* 

"  By  the  -peace  among  the  feofles,  men  shall  know  ye  serve 
the  Lord.'' — Deuteeonomy,  xvi.  7. 

.  .  .  Leaping  into  a  well-appointed  cab,  I  was  soon 
whirled  to  a  terminus  which  shall  be  nameless,  not  a 
hundred  miles  from  Brandon  Street,  and  had  the  good 
luck  to  swing  myself  into  the  guard's  van  just  as  the 
train  was  steaming  out  from  the  platform.  I  plunged 
at  once  in  medias  res,  and  some  two  hours  later  alit  in 
the  sunny  and  growing  residential  town  of  Worthing. 
I  hailed  a  vehicle  which  plied  for  hire,  and  begged  the 
driver  to  conduct  me  to  29,  Darbhai  Road,  "  if  indeed," 

*  I  reproduce  the  title  in  its  original  form.  I  was  only 
too  pleased  to  know  that  my  work  would  appear  above  his 
signature ;  nor  do  I  see  anything  reprehensible  in  what  is  nov/ 
a  recognised  custom  among  journalists. 


THE  INTERVIEW  91 

to  quote  my  own  words  to  the  Jehu,  "if  indeed  it  be 
worth  a  drive.     I  understand  it  is  close  upon  a  mile." 

"Yes,  sir,"  replied  the  honest  fellow.  "You  will 
find,  sir,  that  it  is  quite  a  mile,  sir.  Indeed,  sir,  we 
call  it  a  little  over  a  mile,  sir." 

I  was  soon  whirled,  as  fast  as  the  type  of  carriage 
permitted,  to  Laburnum  Lodge,  Darbhai  Road,  where  a 
neat-handed  Phyllis  smilingly  opened  the  door  for  me, 
and  took  my  card  up  to  her  master,  bidding  me  be 
seated  awhile  in  the  hall.  I  had  the  leisure  to  notice 
that  it  was  lit  by  two  stained  glass  panels  above  the 
entrance,  representing  Alfred  the  Great  and  Queen 
Victoria.  In  a  few  minutes  the  servant  returned  with 
the  message  that  her  master  would  be  down  in  a  moment, 
and  begged  me  to  enter  his  parlour  until  he  could  attend 
me,  as  he  was  just  then  in  his  study,  looking  out  of 
window  at  a  cricket  match  in  an  adjoining  field. 

I  found  myself  in  a  richly-furnished  room,  surrounded 
by  curious  relics  of  travel,  and  I  was  delighted  to  notice 
the  little  characteristic  touches  that  marked  the  personal 
tastes  of  my  host.  Several  skulls  adorned  the  walls, 
and  I  observed  that  any  natural  emotion  they  might 
cause  was  heightened  by  a  few  tasteful  lines  such  as 
actors  paint  upon  their  faces.  Thus  one  appeared  to 
grin  beyond  the  ordinary,  another  was  fitted  with  false 
eyes,  and  all  had  that  peculiar  subtle  expression  upon 
which  genius  loves  to  repose  in  its  moments  of  leisure. 
I  had  barely  time  to  mark  a  few  more  notable  matters  in 
my  surroundings,  when  I  was  aware  that  I  was  in  the 
presence  of  my  host. 

"No,"  or  "Yes,"  said  the  great  man,  smiling 
through  his  spectacles  and  puffing  a  cloud  of  smoke 


92  THE  AFTERMATH 

towards  me  in  a  genial  fashion,  "  I  do  not  in  the  least 
mind  telling  you  how  it  is  done.  I  do  not  think,"  he 
added  drily,  "  that  any  other  fellows  will  pull  quite 
the  same  chock-a-block  haul,  even  if  I  do  give  them  the 
fall  of  the  halyard.  You  must  excuse  these  technical 
terms ;  I  make  it  a  point  to  speak  as  I  write — I  think  it 
is  more  natural." 

I  said  I  should  be  delighted  to  excuse  him. 

"  I  hope  you  will  also  excuse,"  he  continued,  "my 
throwing  myself  into  my  favourite  attitude." 

I  said  that,  on  the  contrary,  I  had  long  wished  to  see  it. 

With  a  sigh  of  relief  he  thrust  those  creative  hands 
of  his  into  his  trouser  pockets,  slightly  stooped  his 
shoulders,  and  appeared  to  my  delight  exactly  as  he 
does  in  the  photograph  he  handed  me  for  publication. 

"  To  show  you  how  it  is  done,  I  cannot  begin  better 
than  by  a  little  example,"  he  said. 

He  went  to  a  neighbouring  table,  rummaged  about  in 
a  pile  of  the  Outlook  and  Vanity  Fair,  and  produced  a 
scrap  of  paper  upon  which  there  was  a  type-written 
poem.  His  hands  trembled  with  pleasure,  but  he  con- 
trolled himself  well  (for  he  is  a  strong,  silent  kind  of 
man),  and  continued  : 

"  I  will  not  weary  you  with  the  whole  of  this  Work. 
I  am  sure  you  must  already  be  familiar  with  it.  In  the 
Volunteer  camp  where  I  was  recently  staying,  and  where 
I  slept  under  canvas  like  anybody  else,  the  officers  knew 
it  by  heart,  and  used  to  sing  it  to  a  tune  of  my  own 
composition  (for  you  must  know  that  I  write  these  little 
things  to  airs  of  my  own).  I  will  only  read  you  the 
last  verse,  which,  as  is  usual  in  my  lyrics,  contains  the 
pith  of  the  whole  matter." 


THE  INTERVIEW  93 

Then  in  a  deep  voice  he  intoned  the  following,  with 
a  slightly  nasal  accent  which  lent  it  a  peculiarly  indi- 
vidual flavour  : 

"I'm  sorry  for  Mister  Naboth  ; 
I'm  sorry  to  make  him  squeak  ; 
But  the  Lawd  above  me  made  me  strawng 
In  order  to  pummel  the  weak. 

"  That  chorus,  which  applies  to  one  of  the  most 
important  problems  of  the  Empire,  contains  nearly  all 
the  points  that  illustrate  '  How  it  is  Done. '  In  the  first 
place,  note  the  conception  of  the  Law.  It  has  been  my 
effort  to  imprint  this  idea  of  the  Law  upon  the  mind  of 
the  English-speaking  world — a  phrase,  by  the  way,  far 
preferable  to  that  of  Anglo-Saxon,  which  I  take  this 
opportunity  of  publicly  repudiating.  You  may,  perhaps, 
have  noticed  that  my  idea  of  the  Law  is  the  strongest 
thing  in  modern  England.  '  Do  this  because  I  tell  you, 
or  it  will  be  the  worse  for  you,'  is  all  we  know,  and  all 
we  need  to  know.  For  so,  it  seems  to  me.  Heaven  " 
(here  he  reverently  raised  the  plain  billy-cock  hat  which 
he  is  in  the  habit  of  wearing  in  his  drawing-room) 
"governs  the  world,  and  we  who  are  Heaven's  lieu- 
tenants can  only  follow  upon  the  same  lines.  I  will  not 
insist  upon  the  extent  to  which  the  religious  training  I 
enjoyed  in  early  youth  helped  to  cast  me  in  that  great 
mould.  You  have  probably  noticed  its  effect  in  all 
my  work." 

I  said  I  had. 

"  Well,  then,  first  and  foremost,  I  have  in  this  typical 
instance  brought  out  my  philosophy  of  the  Law.  In  my 
private  conversation  I  call  this  '  following  the  gleam.'  " 

"  Now    for   the   adventitious    methods   by    which    I 


94  THE  AFTERMATH 

enhance  the  value  of  my  work.  Consider  the  lilt. 
*  Lilt '  is  the  '  Turn  ti  ti  turn  ti  turn  '  effect  which  you 
may  have  felt  in  my  best  verse." 

I  assured  him  I  had  indeed  felt  it. 

"  Lilt,"  he  continued,  "  is  the  hardest  thing  of  all  to 
acquire.  Thousands  attempt  it,  and  hundreds  fail.  I 
have  it  (though  I  say  it  who  should  not)  to  perfection. 
It  is  the  quality  you  will  discover  in  the  old  ballads, 
but  there  it  is  often  marred  by  curious  accidents  which 
I  can  never  properly  explain.  Their  metre  is  often 
very  irregular,  and  I  fancy  that  their  style  (which  my 
Work  closely  resembles)  has  suffered  by  continual  copy- 
ing. No  :  where  you  get  the  true  '  Lilt '  is  in  the  music 
halls — I  am  sorry  it  is  so  often  wasted  upon  impertinent 
themes.  Do  you  know  '  It  is  all  very  fine  and  large,' 
or  '  At  my  time  of  life,'  or  again,  '  Now  we  shan't  be 
long'?" 

I  answered  I  had  them  all  three  by  heart. 

"  I  shouldn't  say  they  were  worth  Ma/,"  he  answered, 
as  a  shade  of  disappointment  appeared  upon  his  delicate, 
mobile  features,  "  but  there  is  a  place  where  you  get 
it  to  perfection,  and  that  is  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rotne.  They  are  my  favourite  reading.  But  that  is 
another  story. 

"  To  turn  to  quite  a  different  point,  the  Vernacular. 
It  isn't  everything  that  will  go  down  in  ordinary  English. 
Of  course  I  do  use  ordinary  English — at  least,  Bible 
English,  in  my  best  work.  For  instance,  there  is  a 
little  thing  called  "  In  the  Confessional,"  which  I 
propose  to  read  to  you  later,  and  which  has  no  slang  nor 
swear- words  from  beginning  to  end. 

"But,  of  course,  that  is  quite  an  exception.     Most 


THE  INTERVIEW  95 

things  won't  stand  anything  but  dialect,  and  I  just  give 
you  this  tip  gratis.  You  can  make  anything  individual 
and  strong  by  odd  spelling.  It  arrests  the  attention, 
and  you  haven't  got  to  pick  your  words.  Did  you  ever 
read  a  beautiful  work  called  Colorado  Bill;  or,  From 
Cowboy  to  President?  Well,  I  can  assure  you  that  when 
it  was  in  English,  before  being  turned  into  dialect,  it 
was  quite  ordinary-like. 

"  But  that  ain't  all.  One  has  now  and  then  to  strike 
a  deeper  note,  and  striking  a  deeper  note  is  so  simple, 
that  I  wonder  it  has  not  occurred  to  others  of  our  poets. 
You  have  got  to  imagine  yourself  in  a  church,  and  you 
must  read  over  your  manuscript  to  yourself  in  that  kind 
of  hollow  voice — you  know  what  I  mean." 

I  swore  that  I  did. 

"Now,  you  see  why  one  puts  'ye'  for  'you,'  and 
*  ye  be  '  for  '  you  are, '  and  mentions  the  Law  in  so  many 
words.  It  is  not  very  difficult  to  do,  and  when  one  does 
succeed,  one  gets  what  I  call  A  i  copper-bottomed  poetry." 

He  went  to  a  corner  of  the  room,  opened  a  large, 
scented,  velvet-bound  book  upon  a  brass  reading-desk, 
looked  at  me  severely,  coughed  twice,  and  began  as 
follows  : 

"  I  am  about  to  read  you  '  In  the  Confessional.'  The 
greatest  critic  of  the  century  has  called  this  the  greatest 
poem  of  the  century.  I  begin  at  the  third  verse,  and 
the  seventeenth  line  : 

*  *  *  *  » 

"  Lest  he  forget  the  great  ally 
In  heaven  yclept  hypocrisy, 
So  help  me  Bawb  !     I'll  mark  him  yet — 
Lest  he  forget  !     Lest  he  forget !" 


96  THE  AFTERMATH 

He  closed  the  book  with  becoming  reverence. 

And  there  was  a  silence,  during  which  the  grand 
words  went  on  running  in  my  head  as  their  author  had 
meant  them  to  do.  ' '  Lest  he  forget !  Lest  he  forget ! ' ' 
Ah,  may  heaven  preserve  its  darling  poet,  and  never  let 
him  fall  from  the  height  of  that  great  message. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  genially,  anticipating  my  applause, 
"  good-bye.  But  before  you  go  please  let  me  beg  you 
to  tell  the  public  that  I  lately  wrote  something  for  the 
Times  a  great  deal  better  than  anything  else  I  have  ever 
written.  Nobody  seems  to  read  the  Times,"  he  con- 
tinued, in  a  tone  of  slight  petulance,  "  and  I  have  not 
seen  it  quoted  anywhere.  I  wonder  if  it  is  properly 
known?  Please  tell  people  that  that  little  note  about 
*  copyright '  is  only  for  fun.  Anyone  may  use  it  who 
likes — I  had  a  paragraph  put  in  the  papers  to  say  so. 

It's  like  this "     He  then  added  a  few  conventional 

words  of  God-speed,  and  I  left  him.  I  have  never  seen 
him  since. 

And  yet  .   .   .  and  yet  .   .   . 

The  student  will  now  pardon  me,  I  trust,  if  I  go 
somewhat  more  deeply  into  things  than  is  customary  in 
textbooks  of  this  class.  That  little  conquest  over  pride, 
that  little  task  honestly  performed,  earned  me  some- 
thing I  shall  value  for  ever,  something  that  will  be 
handed  down  in  our  family  ' '  even  unto  the  third  and 
the  fourth  generation  "  {Habb.  vii.  13).  It  is  something 
that  means  far,  far  more  to  me  than  a  mere  acquaintance 
with  an  author  could  possibly  have  done.  For  who  can 
gauge  so  volatile  a  thing  as  friendship?  Who  could 
with  certitude  have  pointed  me  out  and  said,  "  There 
goes  His  friend  "?    The  Written  Thing  remained. 


THE  INTERVIEW  97 

In  my  room,  nay,  just  above  me  as  I  write,  hangs 
framed  the  following  note  in  pencil. 

"Awfully  glad  to  see  the  stuff  in  the  '  Herald,'  but 
say — are  you  old  Caliban?  That  was  rather  stiff  on  a 
jack  high?  Wasn't  it?  Never  mind.  You  didn't  ask 
me  for  my  auto,  but  I  send  it  herewith  right  along,  for 
I  like  you." 

There  is  the  Man  Alone  as  He  IS — .  .  .  It  seems 
of  small  moment,  but  there  is  something  more.  Framed 
in  dark  oak  and  gold  very  sumptuously,  and  hanging 
quite  apart,  is  the  little  shred  of  paper  which  He 
enclosed.  Shall  I  whisper  what  is  written  upon  it? 
.  .  .  ?  ...  The  first  few  jotted  notes  of  the  glorious 
song  v.-hich  rang  through  the  Empire  like  a  bugle-call, 
and  hurled  it  at  Nicaragua. 
Hark    and    attend    my    Chosen  :    Ye   have   heard    me     M*m.—c^n  a 

. ,  preposition  begin 

ye  people  with  a  capital? 

Out  of  the  East, 

wi(k  an  introduction  ? 
I  came  and  the  nations  trembled  :    I   bore  the  Mark     Mtm.—K\ttT. 

■  .-,  ^mm-mm^^^^^^^^  HativC,     "  with    a 

""^^  'Z  WmB^Km^^m.  bag  and  a  blan- 

glory  about   me? 
of  the  Beast, 

And  I  made  ye  a  hundred  books — yea  !  even  an  hundred  Good. 

and  one 
Of  all  the  labours  of  men  that  labour  under  the  sun, 
And  I  dad  me  about  with  Terrors:   Yea!     I  covered  .Second  "y«a"» 

.  ,      ,  .  Uncle  says      de- 

my paths  with  dread,  lete." 

And    the    women-folk    were    astonied    at    the   horrible 

things  I  said. 

And  the  men  of  the  Island  Race  were  some  of  them 

woundily  bored, 
But   the   greater   part   of   them   paid   me  well  :    and   I 

praised  the  Lord. 

7 


98 


THE  AFTERMATH 


And   when — as  the  spirit   was   full — I   sniggered   and 
lapped  and  swore 
"  D '*^''f  y'^'*  ^^  ^^'^^  ^'*^  ^^^  before  me,  men  of  the  days  of  yore. 

is  commonplace.  (  ?) 

LweV   *NIore  ?  When-as  the  spirit  was  full — But  when  it  was  rare  and 

Provisional :  see  low 

Emily  also  about  J  copied  the  Psalms  at  random;  and  lo !  it  was  even 
so  ! 


Plagiarism 

Frivolous, 
Change. 


(Fill  in  here:  ask^MKBI^) 
Publisher 
Then  up  and   arose  the    Daughter-Nations  :    Up  and 
arose 
Uncle  says  that  Fearless  men  reciting  me  fearlessly  through  the  nose, 

repetition    IS  v.^-  j  i^i-  t 

Greek.    Mem.—  Some  of  them  Presbyterian,  and  some  of  them  Jews, 
and  some 
Of    the    Latter-Day    Church,    King    Solomon's    sect — 
which  is  awfully  rum. 
[Stuck.) 
.  .  .  the  lot  of  it  .  .  .  Anglo-Saxons  .  .  .  shout  it  aloud 

...  at  it  again?  .  .  .  back  the  crowd? 
(Fill  in,     Mem. — must  be  consecutive) 

Things  are  not  as  they  were  (common-place) 

(delete) 

Things  are  not  as  they  .  .  .  Things  and  the  Change  .  .  . 
Things  and  .  .  .  things  .  .  . 

(Leave  this  to  fill  in) 


And  some  of  ye  stand  at  a  wicket,  and  they  are  the 

luckier  men, 
But  others  field  afar  on  a  field,  and  ever  and  then, 
Whenas.  Good.  When-as  the  over  is  over,  they  cross  to  the  other  side, 
"^Ho'reT.'^"  '"  -^  weary  thing  to  the  flesh  and  a  wounding  thing  to 

the  pride, 
togoi    '  And  Cabinet  Ministers  play  at  a  game  ye  should  all 

avoid, 
It    is    played    with    youngling    basts    and    a    pellet    of 

celluloid, 
And  a  little  net  on  a  table,  and  is  known  as  the  named 

{better) 


THE  INTERVIEW  99 

Ping  and  the  Pong. 
England,  Daughter  of  Sion,  why  do  you  do  this  wrong  ? 
And  some,  like  witherless  Frenchmen,  circle  around  in 

rings, 
England,    Daughter   of    Sion,    why   do  you    do   these 

things? 
Why  do  you  .  .  . 

(Mem.  —  after     Uncle     to-morrow.      Billy's:     refuse 
terms.) 

These  are  the  chance  lines  as  they  came — the  dis- 
jointed words — everything — just  as  He  wrote  them 
down. 

Reader — or  whatever  you  be — was  that  a  small 
reward?  Are  you  willing  now  to  say  that  Interviewing 
has  no  wages  of  its  own?  Will  you  sneer  at  it  as  unfit 
to  take  its  place  in  your  art?  Truly,  "  Better  is  he  that 
humbleth  himself  than  a  pillar  of  brass,  and  a  meek 
heart  than  many  fastenings." 


VI 

THE  PERSONAL  PAR 

Closely  connected  with  the  Interview,  and  forming  a 
natural  sequel  to  any  treatise  upon  that  Exercise,  is  the 
Personal  Par.  It  contains,  as  it  were,  al'  the  qualities 
of  the  Interview  condensed  into  the  smallest  possible 
space ;  it  advertises  the  subject,  instructs  the  reader,  and 
is  a  yet  sharper  trial  of  the  young  writer's  character. 

The  homely  advice  given  in  the  preceding  section, 
where  mention  was  made  of  "pride"  and  of  "pockets," 
applies  with  far  more  force  to  the  Personal  Par.  With 
the  Interview,  it  is  well  to  mask  one's  name ;  with  the 
Personal  Par,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  conceal  it. 
The  danger  the  author  runs  is  an  attraction  to  Mrs. 
Railston,  who  in  her  book  strongly  advises  this  form  of 
sport — she  herself  does  Bess  in  All  About  Them.  On 
the  other  hand,  Lieut. -Colonel  Lory  says,  in  his 
Journalises  Vade-mecum  (p.  67,)'.  "A  Personal  Par 
should  never  be  penned  by  the  Aspirant  to  Literary 
honours.  Undetected,  it  renders  life  a  burden  of  sus- 
pense; detected,  it  spells  ruin."*  He  quotes  twenty- 
five  well-known  peers  and  financiers  who  rose  by  steadily 
refusing  to  do  this  kind  of  work  during  their  period  of 
probation  on  the  press. 

The  present  guide,  which  is  final,  will  run  to  no  such 

*  Let  the  student  note,  by  way  of  warning,  and  avoid  this 
officer's  use  of  ready-made  phrases. 


THE    PERSONAL   PAR  loi 

extremes.  Secrecy  is  indeed  essential ;  yet  there  are 
three  excellent  reasons  for  writing  Personal  Pars,  at 
least  in  early  youth. 

(i)  The  Personal  Par  is  the  easiest  to  produce  of  all 
forms  of  literature.  Any  man  or  woman,  famous  or 
infamous  for  any  reason,  is  a  subject  ready  to  hand, 
and  to  these  may  be  added  all  persons  whatsoever  living, 
dead,  or  imaginary  ;  and  anything  whatever  may  be  said 
about  them.  Editors,  in  their  honest  dislike  of  giving 
pain,  encourage  the  inane,  and  hence  more  facile,  form 
of  praise.  Moreover,  it  takes  but  a  moment  to  write, 
and  demands  no  recourse  to  books  of  reference. 

(2)  The  Personal  Par  can  always  be  placed — if  not 
in  England,  then  in  America.  Though  written  in  any 
odd  moments  of  one's  leisure  time,  it  will  always  repre- 
sent money ;  and  the  whole  of  the  period  from  July  to 
October,  when  ordinary  work  is  very  slack,  can  be  kept 
going  from  the  stock  one  has  by  one. 

(3)  It  has  a  high  economic  value,  not  only  in  the  price 
paid  for  it,  but  indirectly,  as  an  advertisement.  This  is 
a  point  which  Lieut. -Colonel  Lory  and  Mrs.  Railston 
both  overlook. 

A  short  specimen,  written  in  August,  1885,  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  movement,  by  my  friend,  Mrs. 
Cowley  (the  Folk-Lorist,  not  the  Poetess),  for  the 
Gazette,  will  make  these  three  points  clear  : 

"  The  capture  of  that  rare  bird,  the  Cross-tailed 
Eagle,  which  is  cabled  from  St.  Fandango's,  recalls 
the  fact  that  the  famous  Picture  "Tiny  Tots"  was 
formerly  in  the  possession  of  the  present  Governor  of 
that  island.  The  picture  is  put  up  to  auction  by  Messrs. 
Philpots  next   Saturday,    and,   judging  by   the  public 


I02  THE  AFTERMATH 

attendance  at  their  galleries  during  the  last  fortnight, 
the  bidding  should  be  brisk." 

There  is  no  such  bird  as  the  Cross-tailed  Eagle,  nor 
any  such  person  as  the  Governor  of  St.  Fandango's, 
nor  indeed  is  there  even  any  such  island.  Yet  Mrs. 
Cowley  was  paid  5s.  by  the  Gazette  for  her  little  bit  of 
research;  it  was  copied  into  most  of  the  papers,  with 
acknowledgment,  and  she  got  a  commission  from  Messrs. 
Philpots.  The  former  owner  of  "Tiny  Tots"  (Mr. 
Gale  of  Kew,  a  wealthy  man)  wrote  a  long  and  inter- 
esting letter  explaining  that  some  error  had  been  made, 
and  that  not  he,  but  his  wife's  father,  had  been  an 
Insfector*  (not  Governor)  in  St.  Vincent's.  He  begged 
the  writer  to  call  on  him — her  call  was  the  origin  of  a 
life-long  friendship,  and  Mrs.  Cowley  was  mentioned  in 
his  will. 

I  must  detain  the  student  no  longer  with  what  is, 
after  all,  a  very  small  corner  of  our  art,  but  conclude 
with  a  few  carefully  chosen  examples  before  proceeding 
to  the  next  section  on  Topographical  Essays. 

Examples 
Wit  and  Wisdom  of  the  Upper  Classes 
Her  Royal  Highness  the  Hereditary  Grand  Duchess 
of  Solothurn  was  driving  one  day  down  Pall  Mall  when 
she  observed  a  poor  pickpocket  plying  his  precarious 
trade.     Stopping  the  carriage  immediately,  she  asked 
him  gently  what  she  could  do  for  him.     He  was  dumb- 
founded for  a  reply,  and,  withdrawing  his  hand  from 
the  coat-tail  of  an  elderly  major,  managed  to  mumble 
*  Of  what? 


THE    PERSONAL    PAR  103 

out  that  he  was  a  widower  with  a  wife  and  six  children 
who  were  out  of  work  and  refused  to  support  him, 
though  earning  excellent  wages.  This  reasoning  so 
touched  the  Princess,  that  she  immediately  gave  him  a 
place  as  boot-black  in  the  Royal  Palace  of  Kensington. 
Discharged  from  this  position  for  having  prosecuted 
H.R.H.  for  six  months'  arrears  of  wages,  he  set  up  as 
a  publican  at  the  "  Sieve  and  Pannier  "  at  Wimbledon, 
a  licence  of  some  ten  thousand  pounds  in  value,  and  a 
standing  example  of  the  good  fortune  that  attends  thrift 

and  industry. 

*  *  * 

It  is  not  generally  known  that  the  late  Lord  Grum- 
bletooth  rose  from  the  ranks.  His  lordship  was  a 
singularly  reticent  man,  and  the  matter  is  still  shrouded 
in  obscurity.  He  was,  however,  a  politician  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  word,  and  owed  his  advancement  to  the 
virtues  that  have  made  England  famous.  The  collection 
of  domestic  china  at  Grumbletooth  House  will  vie  with 
any  other  collection  at  any  similar  house  in  the  kingdom. 

*  *  * 

Dr.  Kedge,  whose  death  was  recently  announced  in 
the  papers,  was  the  son  of  no  less  a  personage  than 
Mr.  Kedge,  of  the  Old  Hall,  Eybridge.  It  is  hardly 
fair  to  call  him  a  self-made  man,  for  his  father  paid  a 
considerable  sum  both  for  his  education  and  for  the 
settlement  of  his  debts  on  leaving  the  University.  But 
he  was  a  bright-eyed,  pleasant  host,  and  will  long  be 
regretted  in  the  journalistic  world. 

*  *  * 

Lady  Gumm's  kindness  of  heart  is  well  known.  She 
lately  presented  a  beggar  with  a  shilling,  and  then  dis- 


I04  THE  AFTERMATH 

covered  tliat  she  had  not  the  wherewithal  to  pay  her  fare 
home  from  Queen's  Gate  to  276,  Park  Lane  (her  lady- 
ship's town  house).  Without  a  moment's  hesitation  she 
borrowed  eighteen  pence  of  the  grateful  mendicant,  a 
circumstance  that  easily  explains  the  persecution  of 
t^'hich  she  has  lately  been  the  victim. 
*  *  * 

Lord  Harmbury  was  lately  discovered  on  the  top  of  a 
bus  by  an  acquaintance  who  taxed  him  with  the  mis- 
adventure. "  I  would  rather  be  caught  on  a  bus  than 
in  a  trap,"  said  the  witty  peer.  The  mot  has  had  some 
success  in  London  Society. 


Mr.  Mulhausen,  the  M.F.H.  of  the  North  Downshire 
Hunt,  has  recently  written  an  article  on  "  Falconry" 
for  the  Angler's  World.  The  style  of  the  "  brochure  " 
shows  a  great  advance  in  "  technique,"  and  cannot  fail 
to  give  a  permanent  value  to  his  opinion  on  Athletics, 
Gentleman-farming,  and  all  other  manly  sports  and 
pastimes.  Mr.  Mulhausen  is,  by  the  way,  a  recently- 
elected  member  of  the  Rock-climbers'  Club,  and  is 
devoted  to  Baccarat. 

*  *  # 

There  is  no  truth  in  the  rumour  that  Miss  Finn-Coul, 
daughter  of  Colonel  Wantage-Brown,  was  about  to 
marry  her  father's  second  wife's  son  by  an  earlier 
marriage,  Mr.  James  Grindle-Torby.  The  Colonel  is 
a  strong  Churchman,  and  disapproves  of  such  unions 
between  close  relatives;  moreover,  as  CO.,  he  has  for- 
bidden the  young  lieutenant  (for  such  is  his  rank)  to 


THE    PERSONAL    PAR  105 

leave  the  barracks  for  a  fortnight,  a  very  unusual  pro- 
ceeding in  the  Hussars, 

*  *  « 

Lady  Sophia  Van  Huren  is  famous  for  her  repartee. 
In  passing  through  Grosvenor  Gate  an  Irish  beggar  was 
heard  to  hope  that  she  would  die  the  black  death  of 
Machushla  Shawn.  A  sharp  reply  passed  her  lips,  and 
it  is  a  thousand  pities  that  no  one  exactly  caught  its 
tenor ;  it  was  certainly  a  gem. 

*  *  » 

It  is  well  known  that  the  Bishop  of  Pontygarry  has 
no  sympathy  with  the  extreme  party  in  the  Church. 
Only  the  other  day  he  was  so  incensed  at  a  service  held 
in  Ribble-cum-Taut,  that  he  fought  the  officiating  clergy- 
man for  half  an  hour  in  his  own  garden,  and  extorted  a 
complete  apology.  He  also  forbad  anyone  in  the  village 
ever  to  go  to  Church  again,  and  himself  attended  the 
Methodist  Chapel  on  the  ensuing  Sunday.  Had  we  a 
few  more  prelates  of  the  same  mettle  things  would  be  in 
a  very  different  condition. 


VII 

THE  TOPOGRAPHICAL  ARTICLE 

The  Topographical  Article  is  so  familiar  as  to  need  but 
little  introduction.  .  .  .  Personally,  I  do  not  recom- 
mend it;  it  involves  a  considerable  labour;  alone,  of 
all  forms  of  historical  writing,  it  demands  accuracy; 
alone,  it  is  invariably  unpaid. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  special  occasions  when  it  will 
be  advisable  to  attempt  it;  as — in  order  to  please  an 
aged  and  wealthy  relative ;  in  order  to  strike  up  a  chance 
acquaintance  with  a  great  Family ;  in  order  to  advertise 
land  that  is  for  sale ;  in  order  to  prevent  the  sale,  or  to 
lower  the  price  (in  these  two  last  cases  it  is  usual  to 
demand  a  small  fee  from  the  parties  interested);  in 
order  to  vent  a  just  anger ;  in  order  to  repay  a  debt ;  in 
order  to  introduce  a  "  special  "  advertisement  for  some 
manure  or  other;  and  so  forth.  Most  men  can  recall 
some  individual  accident  when  a  training  in  Topo- 
graphical Writing  would  have  been  of  value  to  them. 

There  even  arise,  though  very  rarely,  conditions  under 
which  this  kind  of  writing  is  positively  ordered.  Thus, 
when  the  Editor  of  the  Evening  Mercury  changed  his 
politics  for  money  on  the  17th  of  September,  1899,  all 
that  part  of  his  staff  who  were  unable  to  drop  their 
outworn  shibboleths  were  put  on  to  writing  up  various 
parts  of  London  in  the  legal  interval  preceding  their 
dismissal,  and  a  very  good  job  they  made  of  it. 

106 


THE   TOPOGRAPHICAL  ARTICLE       107 

Never,  perhaps,  were  the  five  rules  governing  the  art 
more  thoroughly  adhered  to.  A  land-owning  family  was 
introduced  into  each;  living  persons  were  treated  with 
courtesy  and  affection ;  a  tone  of  regret  was  used  at  the 
opening  of  each ;  each  closed  with  a  phrase  of  passionate 
patriotism;  and  each  was  carefully  run  parallel  to  the 
course  of  English  History  in  general ;  and  the  proper 
praise  and  blame  allotted  to  this  name  and  that,  accord- 
ing to  its  present  standing  with  the  more  ignorant  of  the 
general  public* 

It  was  in  this  series  (afterwards  issued  in  Book  form 
under  the  title,  London  I  My  London)  that  the  following 
article — which  I  can  put  forward  as  an  excellent  model 
— was  the  contribution  of  my  friend,  Mr.  James  Bayley. 
It  may  interest  the  young  reader  (if  he  be  as  yet  un- 
familiar with  our  great  London  names)  to  know  that 
under  the  pseudonym  of  "Cringle"  is  concealed  the 
family  of  Holt,  whose  present  head  is,  of  course,  the 
Duke  of  Sheffield. 


DISAPPEARING  LONDON:   MANNING 
GREEN 

At  a  moment  when  a  whole  district  of  the  metropolis 
is  compulsorily  passing  into  the  hands  of  a  soulless 
corporation,  it  is  intolerable  that  the  proprietors  of  land 
in  that  district  should  receive  no  compensation  for  the 
historical  importance  of  their  estates.  Manning  Green, 
which  will  soon  be  replaced  by  the  roar  and  bustle — or 

*  The  student  will  find  a  list  of  Historical  Personages  to 
praise  and  blame  carefully  printed  in  two  colours  at  the  end 
of  Williams'  Journalist's  History  of  England. 


io8  THE  AFTERMATH 

bustle  and  confusion,   whichever  you  like — of  a  great 

railway  station,  is  one  of  those  centres  whence  the  great 

empire-builders  of  our  race  proceeded  in  past  times. 

For  many  centuries  it  was  a  bare,  bleak  spot,  such  as 

our  England  could  boast  by  the  thousand  in  the  rude 

but  heroic  days  when  the  marvellous  fortunes  of  the 

Anglo-Saxon  race  were  preparing  in  the  slow  designs  of 

Providence.     For  perhaps  a  generation  it  was  one  of 

those  suburban  villages  that  are  said  by  a  contemporary 

poet  to  "  nestle  in  their  trees."     Doubtless  it  sent  forth 

in  the  sixties  many  brave  lads  to  fight  for  the  liberties 

of  Europe  in  Italy  or  Denmark,  but  their  humble  record 

has  perished.      Such   a  thought   recalls  the  fine  lines 

of  Gray  : 

"  Some  mute  inglorious  Milton  here  may  rest; 
Some  Cromwell  guiltless  of  his  country's  blood." 

Twenty  to  twenty -five  years  ago  the  advancing  tide  of 
the  capital  of  the  world  swept  round  this  little  outlying 
place ;  it  was  submerged,  and  soon  made  part  of  greater 
London. 

Relics  are  still  to  be  discovered  of  the  period  when 
Manning  Green  had  something  rural  about  it,  as  High- 
gate  and  South  Croydon  have  now.  Thus  "  The  Jolly 
Drover"  (whose  licence  was  recently  refused  because  it 
was  not  a  tied  house)  recalls  the  great  sheep-droves  that 
once  passed  through  the  village  from  the  north.  It  is 
now  rare  indeed  to  meet  with  a  countryman  driving  his 
flock  to  market  through  the  streets  of  London,  though 
the  sight  is  not  absolutely  unknown.  The  present  writer 
was  once  stopped  in  the  early  morning  by  a  herd  of 
oxen  south  of  Westminster  Bridge,  and  what  may  seem 
more  remarkable  he  has  frequently  seen  wild  animals  in 


THE   TOPOGRAPHICAL   ARTICLE       109 

the  charge  of  negroes  pass  through  Soho  on  their  way  to 
the  Hippodrome.     It  is  as  Tennyson  says  : 

"  The  old  order  changes,  giving  plaice  to  the  new," 

until  at  last 

"  Beyond  these  voices  there  is  peace." 

Another  relic  of  the  old  village  of  Manning  Green  is 
the  Court  Baron,  which  is  still  held  (how  few  Londoners 
know  this  !)  once  a  year,  for  the  purpose  of  providing  a 
small  but  regular  income  to  a  relative  of  the  Lord 
Chancellor.  This  Court  was  probably  not  held  before 
the  year  1895,  but  it  is  none  the  less  of  extreme  interest 
to  antiquarians. 

The  first  mention  of  Manning  Green  in  history  is  in  a 
letter  to  Edward  Lord  Cringle,  the  pioneer  and  ally  of 
the  beneficent  reforms  that  remain  inseparably  associated 
with  the  name  of  the  eighth  Henry.  This  letter  is 
written  from  prison  by  one  Henry  Turnbull,  a  yeoman, 
and  contains  these  phrases  : 

"  For  that  very  certainly,  my  good  Lord,  I  never  did  this 
thing,  no,  nor  met  the  Friar  nor  had  any  dealing  with  him. 
And  whatever  I  did  that  they  say  is  treason  I  did  it  being 
a  simple  man,  as  following  the  Mass,  which  I  know  is  welcome 
to  the  King's  Majesty,  and  not  knowing  who  it  was  that  sang 
it,  no,  nor  speaking  to  him  after,  as  God  knows.  And,  my 
dear  Lord,  I  have  had  conveyed  to  you,  as  you  know,  my  land 
of  Horton  with  the  Grey  Farm  and  the  mere  called  Foul  Marsh 
or  Manning,  having  neither  son  nor  any  other  but  my  own 
life  only,  and  for  that  willingly  would  I  give  you  this  land, 
and  so  I  have  done;  and,  my  good  Lord,  speak  for  me  at 
Court  in  this  matter,  remembering  my  gift  of  the  land.  .  .  ." 

This  Turnbull  was  afterwards  executed  for  treason  at 
Tyburn.    There  is  still  a  Turnbull  in  the  parish,  but  as 


no  THE  AFTERMATH 

his  father's  name  was  Weissenstein  he  is  very  unlikely 
to  have  any  connection  with  the  original  family  of 
yeomen. 

The  land  (if  land  it  could  then  be  called)  did  not, 
oddly  enough,  remain  long  in  the  Cringle  family.  It 
was  sold  by  Lord  Edward  to  the  Carmelites,  and  on  the 
dissolution  of  that  order  was  returned  by  the  grateful 
monarch  to  its  original  owner.  We  next  find  "Man- 
ning" or  "Foul  Marsh"  drained  during  that  period 
of  active  beneficence  on  the  part  of  the  great  landlords 
which  marked  the  seventeenth  century.  We  are 
acquainted  of  this  fact  in  our  agricultural  history  by 
an  action  recorded  in  1631,  where  it  appears  that  one 
Nicholas  Hedon  had  gone  to  shoot  snipe,  as  had  been 
once  of  common  right  in  the  manor,  and  had  so  tres- 
passed upon  land  "now  drained  at  his  lordship's 
charges,  and  by  him  enclosed."  Hedon  lost  both  ears, 
and  was  pilloried. 

Manning  is  probably  alluded  to  also  in  a  strong 
protest  of  the  old  Liberal  blood*  against  ship-money, 
to  which  exaction  it  contributed  is.  4d.  The  sum  need 
not  excite  ridicule,  as  it  represents  quite  4s.  of  our 
present  currency.  The  vigorous  protest  of  the  family 
against  this  extortion  is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of 
our  sterling  English  spirit  on  the  eve  of  the  Civil  War. 
The  money  was,  however,  paid. 

In  the  troubles  of  the  Civil  Wars  Manning  (now  no 
longer  a  marsh,  but  a  green)  was  sold  to  John  Grayling, 
but  the  deed  of  conveyance  being  protested  at  the 
Restoration,  it  was  restored  to  its  original  owners  at 
the  intruder's  charge  by  an  action  of  Novel  Disseizin. 
*  The  Holts  are  still  Liberal-Unionists. 


THE    TOPOGRAPHICAL   ARTICLE       iii 

After  Monmouth's  rebellion,  Manning  was  in  danger  of 
suffering  confiscation,  and  was  hurriedly  sold  to  a  chance 
agent  (William  Greaves)  at  so  low  a  price  as  to  refute 
for  ever  all  insinuations  of  rapacity  upon  the  part  of  its 
now  ducal  owners.  It  was  happily  restored  by  a  grate- 
ful nation  as  a  free  gift  after  the  glorious  Revolution 
of  1688,  and  the  agent,  who  had  only  acquired  it  by 
taking  advantage  of  the  recent  troubles,  was  very 
properly  punished.  King  William  congratulated  the 
family  in  a  famous  epigram,  which  a  natural  ignorance 
of  the  Taal  forbids  us  to  transcribe. 

In  1 7 18,  Manning  being  still  pasture  of  a  somewhat 
spongy  nature  (Guy,  in  his  report,  calls  it  "soggy  and 
poor  land,  reedy,  and  fit  for  little  "),  there  was  a  rumour 
that  the  New  River  canal  would  pass  through  it,  and  it 
was  sold  to  Jonathan  Hemp.  The  New  River  was 
proved,  however,  in  the  pleadings  before  both  Houses 
of  Parliament,  to  have  no  necessity  for  this  canal,  and 
Hemp  was  compelled  (as  it  was  a  mere  speculation  on 
his  part)  to  sell  it  back  again  to  its  distinguished  owner 
at  a  merely  nominal  price. 

Nothing  further  can  be  traced  with  regard  to  Manning 
Green  (as  it  was  now  commonly  called)  till  the  report 
in  1780  that  coal  had  been  found  beneath  it.  Such  a 
deposit  so  near  the  metropolis  naturally  attracted  the 
attention  of  merchants,  and  the  Family  sold  the  place 
for  the  last  time  to  a  merchant  of  the  name  of  Hogg 
for  ;^2 0,000. 

The  report  proved  false;  yet,  oddly  enough,  it  was 
the  beginning  of  Mr.  Hogg's  prosperity. 

We  have  no  space  to  dwell  on  this  interesting  character. 
"  Hogg's  Trustees  "  are  an  ecclesiastical  household  word 


112  THE  AFTERMATH 

in  our  principal  watering-places,  and  the  "  Hogg  Insti- 
tute "  at  Brighton  is  a  monument  of  Christian  endeavour. 
He  was  a  shrewd  bargainer,  a  just  man,  and  upon  his 
mantelpieces  were  to  be  discovered  ornaments  in  ala- 
baster representing  Joshua  and  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion, 

The  growth  of  the  metropolis  entered  largely  into 
Mr.  Hogg's  enlightened  prevision  of  the  future,  and 
he  obtained  promises  from  a  large  number  of  people  to 
build  houses  upon  his  land,  which  houses  should,  after 
a  term  of  years,  become  his  (Hogg's)  property,  and 
cease  to  belong  to  those  who  had  paid  to  put  them  up. 
How  Mr.  Hogg  managed  to  obtain  such  promises  is  still 
shrouded  in  mystery,  but  the  universal  prevalence  of 
the  system  to-day  in  modern  England  would  surely 
prove  that  there  is  something  in  our  Imperial  race  which 
makes  this  form  of  charity  an  element  of  our  power. 

Mr.  Hogg's  only  daughter  married  Sir  John  Moss, 
Lord  Mayor;  and  Mr.  Moss,  the  son,  was  the  father 
of  the  present  Lord  Hemelthorpe.  Thus  something 
romantic  still  clings  to  poor  Manning  Green,  of  which 
Lord  Hemelthorpe  was,  until  his  recent  bankruptcy,  the 
proprietor. 

There  is  little  more  to  be  said  about  Manning  Green. 
The  Ebenezer  Chapel  has  a  history  of  its  own,  written 
by  the  Rev.  Napoleon  Plaything,  son  of  Mr.  Honey  Q. 
Plaything,  of  Bismark,  Pa.  The  success  of  the  boys* 
club  has  been  detailed  in  God's  London,  by  Mr.  Zitali, 
of  the  "Mission  to  the  Latin  Races."  The  book  is 
well  worth  buying,  if  only  for  this  one  essay,  written, 
as  it  is,  by  a  brand  saved  from  the  burning.  Mr.  Zitali 
was  for  a  long  time  in  the  employ  of  Messrs.  Manana, 
the  restaurant  keepers,  and  no  one  is  better  fitted  to 


THE   TOPOGRAPHICAL  ARTICLE       113 

deal  strenuously  with  the  awful  problems  of  our  great 
cities. 

Manning  Green  is  about  to  disappear,  and  all  its 
wonderful  associations  will  become  (in  the  words  of 
Swinburne) 

"  Smoke,  or  the  smoke  of  a  smoke." 

But  until  it  disappears,  and  until  its  purchase  price 
is  finally  fixed  by  the  committee,  its  historical  associa- 
tions will  still  remain  dear  to  those  who  (like  the  present 
writer)  are  interested  in  this  corner  of  the  Motherland. 
That  men  of  our  blood,  and  men  speaking  our  tongue — 
nay,  that  those  neither  of  our  blood,  nor  speaking  our 
tongue,  but  devoted  to  a  common  empire — will  remember 
Manning  Green  when  the  sale  is  effected,  is  the  pas- 
sionate and  heartfelt  prayer  of 

James  Bayley. 


VIII 

ON  EDITING 

I  COME  now  to  that  part  of  my  subject  where  pure 
literature  is  of  less  moment  than  organisation  and  the 
power  of  arrangement ;  and  the  last  two  divisions  of  my 
great  task  concern  work  which  has  been  written  by 
others,  and  with  which  the  journalist  has  to  deal  in  the 
capacity  of  manager  rather  than  that  of  author.  These 
are,  a  few  notes  upon  editing,  and  some  further  remarks 
upon  Revelations,  that  is,  unexpected  and  more  or  less 
secret  political  announcements. 

I  deal  here  first  with  editing,  by  which  I  do  not  mean 
the  management  of  a  whole  newspaper — for  this  has  no 
connection  whatever  with  the  art  of  letters — but  the 
selection,  arrangement,  and  annotating  of  work  produced 
by  another  hand,  and  entrusted  to  the  journalist  for 
publication  in  his  columns.  The  work  is  far  easier  than 
might  appear  at  first  sight. 

The  first  rule  in  connection  with  it  is  to  offend  as 
little  as  possible,  and  especially  to  spare  the  living. 

The  second  rule  is  to  cut  down  the  matter  to  fit  the 
space  at  your  disposal.  With  the  exception  of  a  number 
of  MSS.  so  small  that  they  may  be  neglected  in  the 
calculation,  it  does  not  matter  in  the  least  what  you  cut 
out,  so  long  as  you  remember  that  the  parts  remaining 
must  make  sense,  and  so  long  as  you  make  this  second 
rule  fi.t  in  with  the  exigencies  of  the  first. 

114 


ON   EDITING  115 

As  for  annotation,  it  is  the  easiest  tiling  in  tlie  world 
True  to  the  general  principle  which  governs  all  good 
journalism,  that  the  giving  of  pleasure  should  always  be 
preferred  to  the  giving  of  pain,  let  your  annotations 
pleasantly  recall  to  the  reader  his  own  stock  of  know- 
ledge, let  them  be  as  obvious  as  possible,  and  let  him 
not  learn  too  much  from  your  research.  This  method 
has  the  additional  advantage,  that  it  also  saves  you  an 
infinity  of  trouble. 

The  matter  is  really  not  so  elaborate  as  to  need  any 
further  comment.  I  will  proceed  at  once  to  my  example, 
prefacing  it  only  with  the  shortest  explanatory  state- 
ment, which  will  show  how  thoroughly  it  illustrates  the 
rules  I  have  just  enunciated. 

The  wife  of  one  of  the  principal  candidates  for 
Parliament  in  our  part  of  the  country  begged  Dr. 
Caliban  to  publish  a  simple,  chatty  diary,  which  her 
sister  (who  was  married  to  a  neighbouring  squire)  had 
kept  during  some  years.  Dr.  Caliban  was  too  courteous 
to  refuse,  and  had  too  profound  an  acquaintance  with 
the  rural  character  to  despise  this  kind  of  copy.  On  the. 
other  hand,  he  was  compelled  to  point  out  that  he  could 
not  allow  the  series  to  run  through  more  than  six  months, 
and  that  he  should,  therefore,  be  compelled  to  cut  it 
down  at  his  discretion.  P'ull  leave  was  given  him,  and 
I  do  not  think  any  man  could  have  done  the  work  better. 

Thus  the  lady's  husband,  though  a  good  Englishman 
in  every  other  way  (an  indulgent  landlord  and  a  sterling 
patriot),  was  German  by  birth  and  language.  Here  was 
a  truth  upon  which  it  would  have  been  uncharitable  and 
useless  to  insist — a  truth  which  it  was  impossible  to 
conceal,  but  which  it  was  easy  to  glide  over;  and  Dr. 


ii6  THE  AFTERMATH 

Caliban,  as  the  student  will  see  in  a  moment,  glode  over 
it  with  the  lightest  of  feet. 

Again,  a  very  terrible  tragedy  had  taken  place  in  the 
Burpham  family,  and  is  naturally  alluded  to  by  their 
near  neighbour.  It  was  impossible  to  cut  out  all  mention 
of  this  unhappy  thing,  without  destroying  the  diary ; 
but  in  Dr.  Caliban's  edition  of  the  MS.,  the  whole  is 
left  as  vague  as  may  be. 

The  particular  part  which  I  have  chosen  for  a  model 
— I  think  the  most  admirable  piece  of  editing  I  know — 
is  from  that  week  of  the  diary  which  concerns  the  out- 
break of  the  recent  difficulty  with  France,  a  difficulty 
luckily  immediately  arranged,  after  scarcely  a  shot  had 
been  fired,  by  the  mutual  assent  of  the  two  nations  and 
(as  it  is  whispered)  by  the  direct  intervention  of  High 
Authority. 

The  motto  which  Dr.  Caliban  chose  for  the  whole 
series  (called,  by  the  way,  "Leaves  from  a  Country 
Diary  "),  is  a  fine  sentence  from  the  works  of  Mr. 
Bagehot. 

LEAVES   FROM  A  COUNTRY   DIARY 

*'/4«  aristocratic  body  firmly  rooted  in  the  national  soil  is 
not  only  the  fermanent  guarantee  of  the  security  of  the  State, 
but  resembles,  as  it  were,  a  man  better  instructed  than  his 
fellows — more  fromft,  -possessed  of  ample  means,  and  yet 
entrusted  with  power ;  a  man  moreover  who  neve/  dies^ 

February  2tid,  19 — . — To-day  is  the  Purification. 
The  lawn  looked  lovely  under  its  veil  of  snow,  and  the 
vicar  came  in  to  lunch.  We  did  not  discuss  the  question 
of  the  service,  because  I  know  that  Reuben  disapproves 
of  it.     The  vicar  told  me  that  Mrs.   Burpham  is  in 


ON   EDITING  117 

dreadful  trouble.  It  seems  that  the  Bank  at  Moles- 
worth  refused  to  cash  Algernon's  cheque,  and  that  this 
led  Sir  Henry  Murling  to  make  investigations  about  the 
Chattington  affair,  so  that  he  had  to  be  asked  to  resign 
his  commission.  To  be  sure  it  is  only  in  the  Militia,  but 
if  it  all  comes  out,  it  will  be  terrible  for  the  Monsons. 
They  have  already  had  to  dismiss  two  servants  on  these 
grounds.  Jane  has  a  sore  throat,  and  I  made  her  gargle 
some  turpentine  and  oil ;  Ali  Baba's*  hock  is  still  sore. 
I  do  hope  I  shall  keep  my  old  servants,  it  is  an  unwel- 
come thing  to  dismiss  them  in  their  old  age  and  the 
house  is  never  the  same  again.  They  meet  to-morrow  at 
Gumpton  corner,  but  not  if  this  weather  holds. 

February  yd,  19 — . — It  is  thawing.  There  are 
marks  of  boots  across  the  lawn  on  what  is  left  of  the 
snow,  and  I  am  afraid  some  one  must  have  gone  across 
it.  I  wish  Reuben  would  come  back.  Called  at  Mrs. 
Burpham's,  who  is  in  dreadful  trouble.  Algernon  has 
gone  up  to  town  to  see  his  solicitor.  Poor  Mrs.  Burpham 
was  crying ;  she  is  so  proud  of  her  boy.  He  says  it  will 
be  all  right.  They  are  very  bitter  against  the  Bank,  and 
Sir  Henry,  and  the  regiment,  and  the  Monsons.  I  fear 
they  may  quarrel  with  Binston  Parkf  also.  Mrs. 
Burpham  was  so  curious  about  them ;  Jane  is  no  better. 

February  \th,  19 — . — Reuben  came  home  suddenly 
by  the  2.40  with  Mr.  Ehrenbreitstein  and  Lord  Tenter- 

*  The  pet  name  of  the  white  pony.  The  name  is  taken  from 
the  Arabian  Nights. 

+  The  use  of  the  name  of  an  estate  in  the  place  of  the  name 
of  its  owner  or  owners  is  very  common  with  the  territorial 
class  in  our  countrysides.  Thus,  people  will  say,  "  I  have 
been  calling  at  the  Laurels,"  or  "  I  dined  with  the  Monkey 
Tree  "  ;  meaning,  ■'  I  have  been  calling  upon  Mrs.  So-and-So," 
or,  "  I  have  been  dining  with  Sir  Charles  Gibbs." 


ii8  THE   AFTERMATH 

worth.  He  asked  me  to  put  Mr.  Ehrenbreitstein  in  the 
Blue  room  and  Lord  Tenterworth  in  the  Parrot  room 
opposite  the  broom  and  pail  place,  where  Aunt  Marjory 
used  to  sleep.  I  shall  have  to  clear  the  clothes  out  of 
the  drawers.  Just  before  dinner  Mr.  Bischoflfen  came 
in  from  the  station.  Reuben  told  me  he  had  asked  him. 
I  wish  he  would  give  me  longer  notice.  He  brought  a 
secretary  with  him  who  cannot  talk  English.  I  think  he 
must  be  a  Spaniard — he  is  so  dark.  Jane  can  hardly 
speak,  her  throat  is  so  bad  ;  I  told  her  she  might  stay  in 
bed  to-morrow  till  nine. 

February  ^th,  19 — . — Mrs.  Burpham  is  certainly  in 
dreadful  trouble.  She  tells  me  Algernon  has  written 
from  St.  Malo  saying  it  will  be  all  right.  It  was  very 
foolish  and  imprudent  of  him  to  go  over  there  just  now 
with  all  this  trouble  on  with  France.  If  only  he  had 
stayed  at  home  (Mrs.  Burpham  says)  she  would  not  have 
minded  so  much,  but  she  is  afraid  of  his  getting  killed. 
It  seems  they  are  so  savage  at  St.  Malo.*  Only  the 
other  day  an  English  lady  had  a  stone  thrown  in  her 
direction  in  the  street.  Mr.  Bischoffen's  secretary  is  not 
a  Spaniard ;  I  think  he  is  a  Pole ;  his  name  is  Brahms. 
There  was  a  difficulty  about  the  asparagus  last  night. 
It  seems  the  Germans  do  not  eat  it  with  their  fingers. 
Reuben  said  I  ought  to  have  got  little  silver  pincers  for 
it.  I  remember  seeing  them  in  his  father's  house,  but 
papa  said  they  were  very  vulgar.  Then  Reuben  used  to 
apologise  for  them,  and  say  that  his  people  were  old- 
fashioned,  which  was  nonsense,  of  course.  I  reminded 
Reuben  of  this,  and  he  said,  "  Ach  !  Gott !"  and  I  had 
to  leave  the  room.  Ali  Baba  is  all  right ;  he  took  a  piece 
*  A  seaport  in  Brittany. 


ON    EDITING  119 

of  sugar  from  my  hand ;  but  when  I  felt  his  hock  he 
kicked  Jones  severely.  I  fear  Jones  is  really  injured, 
and  I  have  sent  for  Dr.  Minton  and  for  the  veterinary 
surgeon. 

February  6th,    19 — . — Dr.    Minton   dined   here  last 
night  before  going  to  set  Jones'  leg,  and  I  gave  the 
veterinary  surgeon  supper  in  the  old  schoolroom.     I  am 
afraid  Dr.  Minton  took  too  much  wine,  for  he  quarrelled 
with  Mr.  Ehrenbreitstein  and  Mr.  Bischoffen  about  the 
danger  of  war  with  France.     He  said  they  had  no  right 
to  speak,  and  got  quite  excited.     Called  again  on  Mrs. 
Burpham,  and  only  appreciated  fully  to-day  in  what  sad 
trouble  she  is.     Algernon  has  telegraphed  from  Paris 
saying  it  will  be  all  right.     Meanwhile  she  has  certainly 
quarrelled  with  Binston  Park,  and  she  even  spoke  bitterly 
against  the  Duke,  so  that  means  another  family  gone — 
for  the  Duke  is  very  proud.     I  see  in  the  Standard  that 
our  Ambassador  has  delivered  an  ultimatum,  and  that 
the  French  are  doing  all  they  can  to  shirk  war.    That  is 
what  Mr.  Bischoffen  and  Reuben  said  they  would  do, 
but  they  must  be  taught  a  lesson.     Newfoundlands  have 
fallen,  but  Reuben  says  they  must  rise  after  the  war.     I 
do  hope  they  will.     The  dear  Bishop  called.     He  says 
this  war  is  a  judgment  on  the  French.     Jane  is  much 
better,  and  can  talk  quite  clearly,  and  Ali  Baba  is  almost 
well.    Also  it  has  thawed  now  completely,  and  they  can 
meet  on  Saturday  as  usual,  so  things  are  looking  up  all 
round. 

February  "jth,  19 — . — Freddie  goes  to  the  Isle  of 
Wight  with  the  Lambtonshire  Regiment,  and  Mrs. 
Burpham  and  the  Bishop  are  both  delighted,  because 
it  will  bring  him  and  Hepworth  together.     It  would  be 


I20  THE  AFTERMATH 

such  a  solace  to  poor  Mrs.  Burpham  if  Freddie  could 
see  active  service  and  get  promotion;  it  would  help  to 
wipe  out  Algernon's  disgrace,  for  I  fear  there  is  now  no 
doubt  of  it,  though  he  says  it  is  all  right  in  his  last  letter, 
which  is  from  Marseilles.  Letters  still  come  through 
from  France,  because  our  Ambassador  said  that  if  any 
tricks  were  played  with  them  he  would  hold  the  French 
Government  personally  responsible,  and  so  cowed  them. 
The  Bishop  has  gone  to  London  with  his  family. 

February  Uh,  19 — . — The  Standard  has  a  large  map 
of  the  North  of  France,  where  the  fighting  will  be.  It 
is  very  interesting.  Reuben  and  his  friends  have  gone 
up  to  town  again.  I  saw  the  Reserves  marching  through 
Molesworth  to-day;  they  are  going  to  garrison  Ports- 
mouth.* The  afternoon  post  did  not  come  in.  Reuben 
said  he  would  telegraph,  but  I  have  not  got  any  message. 
The  12.40  train  was  an  hour  late,  so  I  suppose  every- 
thing is  upset  by  the  war.  Maria  will  have  to  come 
home  by  Bale,  and  I  do  so  dread  the  passage  from 
Ostend  for  her;  even  the  hour  from  Calais  to  Dover  is 
more  than  she  can  bear.  The  vicar  says  that  our 
Government  will  force  the  French  to  keep  the  Dover- 
Calais  route  open  for  civilians.  He  says  it  would  be 
against  the  practice  of  civilised  warfare  to  close  it,  and 
if  that  were  done  we  should  lay  waste  the  whole  country ; 
but  I  fear  he  does  not  know  much  about  the  legal  aspect 
of  the  thing  :  it  is  his  heart,  not  his  head  that  speaks. 
It  is  dreadful  to  think  what  I  shall  do  with  Mademoiselle f 
when  she  comes  home  with  Maria.    One  can't  blame  her 

*  A  large  military  port  and  dockyard  on  the  coast  of  Hamp- 
shire. 

t  The  generic  term  among  the  wealthy  for  French  menials 
of  the  weaker  sex. 


ON   EDITING  121 

when  one  thinks  that  it  is  her  own  country  that  is  going 
to  be  harried  and  her  own  brothers  brought  here  as 
prisoners ;  but  it  will  be  very  difificult  all  the  same.  The 
man  who  was  killed  at  Bigley  races  was  not  a  Frenchman 
after  all :  the  crowd  only  thought  he  was  because  he  had 
blacked  his  face  like  a  negro.  It  seems  that  Sir  Henry 
was  very  hard  in  court,  and  said  that  the  ringleaders 
were  lucky  not  to  be  indicted  for  manslaughter.  It  has 
frozen  again,  and  it  is  very  slippery  in  the  drive.  They 
are  having  fireworks  or  something  at  Portsmouth,  to 
judge  by  the  sound.  Jones  told  Jane  he  thought  there 
was  a  bonfire  as  well,  because  he  could  see  a  glare  now 
and  then  in  the  sky  from  the  window  in  his  room.  His 
leg  is  setting  nicely. 


IX 

ON  REVELATIONS 

Revelations,  again,  as  we  found  to  be  the  case  with 
editing,  do  not  properly  constitute  a  department  of  the 
art  of  letters.  Though  they  are  of  far  more  importance 
than  any  other  branch  of  contemporary  journalism,  yet 
it  is  impossible  to  compare  their  publication  to  a  creative 
act  of  pure  literature. 

It  may  be  urged  that  such  Revelations  as  are  written 
in  the  office  of  the  newspaper  publishing  them  are  not 
only  literature,  but  literature  of  a  very  high  order. 
They  are,  on  the  face  of  it,  extremely  difficult  to  com- 
pose. If  they  are  to  have  any  chance  of  deceiving  the 
public,  the  writer  must  thoroughly  know  the  world  which 
he  counterfeits;  he  must  be  able  to  copy  its  literary  style, 
its  air,  its  errors.  It  is  even  sometimes  necessary  for 
him  to  attempt  the  exquisitely  subtle  art  of  forgery. 

The  objection  is  well  found ;  but  it  is  not  of  this  kind 
of  Revelation  that  I  propose  to  speak.  It  belongs  to  the 
higher  branches  of  our  art,  and  is  quite  unsuited  to  a 
little  elementary  manual. 

The  Revelation  I  speak  of  here  is  the  ordinary  type 
of  private  communication,  domestic  treason,  or  accidental 
discovery,  dealing,  as  a  rule,  with  public  affairs,  and 
brought  to  the  office  spontaneously  by  servants,  colonial 
adventurers,  or  ministers  of  religion. 

122 


ON   REVELATIONS  123 

Nine  Revelations  out  of  ten  are  of  this  kind ;  and  the 
young  journalist  who  may  desire  to  rise  in  his  great 
calling  must  make  himself  thoroughly  familiar  with  the 
whole  process  by  which  they  are  to  be  procured  and 
published. 

A  small  amount  of  additional  matter  has,  indeed, 
sometimes  to  be  furnished,  but  it  is  almost  insignificant, 
and  is,  moreover,  of  so  conventional  a  nature,  that  it 
need  not  trouble  us  for  a  moment.  Some  such  phrase  as 
"  We  have  received  the  following  communication  from 
a  source  upon  which  we  place  the  firmest  reliance,"  will 
do  very  well  to  open  with,  and  at  the  end  :  *'  We  shall 
be  interested  to  see  what  reply  can  be  given  to  the 
above,"  is  a  very  useful  formula.  Thus  the  words  "  To 
be  continued,"  added  at  the  end  are  often  highly  lucra- 
tive. They  were  used  by  the  Courrier  des  Frises  (a  first- 
class  authority  on  such  matters),  when  it  recently  pub- 
lished a  number  of  private  letters,  written  (alas  !)  in  the 
English  tongue,  and  concerning  the  noblest  figure  in 
English  politics. 

But  though  there  is  little  to  be  done  in  the  way  of 
writing,  there  is  a  considerable  mental  strain  involved  in 
judging  whether  a  particular  Revelation  will  suit  the 
proprietor  of  the  newspaper  upon  which  one  is  employed, 
and  one  must  not  unf requently  be  prepared  to  suffer  from 
exhausting  terrors  for  some  weeks  after  its  publication. 

Difficult  as  is  the  art  of  testing  Revelation,  the  rules 
that  govern  it  are  few  and  simple.  The  Revelator,  if  a 
domestic  servant,  wears  a  round  black  bowler  hat  and  a 
short  jacket,  and  a  pair  of  very  good  trousers  stolen 
from  his  master;  he  will  be  clean  shaven.  If  an 
adventurer  or  minister  of  religion,  he  will  wear  a  soft 


124  THE  AFTERMATH 

felt  hat  and  carry  a  large  muffler  round  his  throat. 
Either  sort  walk  noiselessly,  but  the  first  in  a  firm,  and 
the  second  in  a  shuffling  manner.  I  am  far  from  saying 
that  all  who  enter  newspaper  offices  under  this  appear- 
ance bear  with  them  Revelations  even  of  the  mildest 
kind,  but  I  do  say  that  whenever  Revelations  come, 
they  are  brought  by  one  of  these  two  kinds  of  men. 

I  should  add  that  the  Revelator,  like  the  money- 
lender, the  spy,  and  every  other  professional  man  whose 
livelihood  depends  upon  efficiency,  is  invariably  sober. 
If  any  man  come  to  you  with  a  Revelation  and  seem 
even  a  trifle  drunk,  dismiss  him  without  inquiry,  though 
not  before  you  have  admonished  him  upon  his  shame 
and  sin,  and  pointed  out  the  ruin  that  such  indulgence 
brings  upon  all  save  the  wealthy. 

When  a  man  arrives  who  seems  at  all  likely  to  have  a 
Revelation  in  his  pocket,  and  who  offers  it  for  sale, 
remember  that  you  have  but  a  few  moments  in  which  to 
make  up  your  mind ;  put  him  into  the  little  room  next 
to  the  sub-editor,  take  his  MS.,  tell  him  you  will  show 
it  to  your  chief,  and,  as  you  leave  him,  lock  the  door 
softly  on  the  outside. 

The  next  moment  may  decide  your  whole  career.  You 
must  glance  at  the  Revelation,  and  judge  in  that  glance 
whether  the  public  will  believe  it  even  for  two  full 
hours.  The  whole  difference  between  a  successful  and 
an  unsuccessful  journalist  lies  in  that  power  of  sudden 
vision;  nor  will  experience  alone  achieve  it,  it  must  be 
experience  touched  with  something  like  genius. 

Libellous  matter  you  can  delete.  Matter  merely  false 
will  not  be  remembered  against  you ;  but  if  that  rare 
and  subtle  character  which  convinces  the  mob  be  lacking. 


ON   REVELATIONS  125 

that  is  a  thing  which  no  one  can  supply  in  the  time 
between  the  Revelator's  arrival  and  the  paper's  going 
to  press. 

Finally,  when  you  have  made  your  decision,  return, 
unlock,  pay,  and  dismiss.  Never  pay  by  cheque. 
Remember  how  short  is  the  time  at  your  disposal.  Re- 
member that  if  your  paper  does  not  print  a  really  good 
Revelation  when  it  is  offered,  some  other  paper  will. 
Remember  the  Times,  the  Chronicle,  and  Major  Ester- 
hazy.  Remember  Mr.  Gladstone's  resignation.  .  .  . 
Remember  the  "  Maine." 

A  few  practical  instances  will  help  us  to  understand 
these  abstract  rules. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  following — one  of  the 
wisest  acts  of  Dr.  Caliban's  whole  life. 

Dr.  Caliban  was  busy  writing  a  leader  for  the  Sunday 
Englishman  upon  "  Hell  or  Immortality  ";  for  it  was 
Saturday  night,  he  had  just  received  the  weekly  papers, 
and,  as  he  well  said,  "A  strong  Sunday  paper  has 
this  advantage,  that  it  can  do  what  it  likes  with  the 
weeklies." 

He  was,  I  say,  in  the  midst  of  Hell  or  Immortality, 
when  he  was  interrupted  by  a  note.  He  opened  it,  read 
it,  frowned,  and  passed  it  to  me,  saying  : 

"  What  do  you  make  of  this?" 

The  note  ran  : 

"  I  have  just  been  dismissed  from  the  Sfectator  for  sneez- 
ing in  an  indelicate  manner.  I  have  a  Revelation  to  make 
with  regard  to  the  conduct  of  that  paper.  Please  see  me  at 
once,  or  it  may  be  too  late.  I  have  with  me  a  letter  which 
the  Sfectator  will  publish  next  week.  It  throws  a  searching 
light  upon  the  Editor's  mind,  and  lays  bare  all  the  inner 
workings  of  the  paper.     Price  40s." 


126  THE  AFTERMATH 

1  told  Dr.  Caliban  that,  in  my  opinion,  on  the  one 
hand,  there  might  be  something  in  it;  while  on  the 
other  hand,  that  there  might  not. 

Dr.  Caliban  looked  at  me  thoughtfully  and  said  : 

"You  think  that?" 

He  touched  an  electric  bell.  As  this  did  not  ring,  he 
blew  down  a  tube,  and  receiving  no  answer,  nor  indeed 
hearing  the  whistle  at  the  other  end,  he  sent  a  messenger, 
who,  by  some  accident,  failed  to  return  to  the  editorial 
office.  Dr.  Caliban  himself  went  down  and  brought  up 
the  stranger.  He  was  a  young  man  somewhat  cadaver- 
ous. He  repeated  what  he  had  said  in  his  note,  refused 
to  bargain  in  any  way,  received  two  sovereigns  from 
Dr.  Caliban's  own  purse,  sighed  deeply,  and  then  with 
a  grave  face  said  : 

"  It  feels  like  treason." 

He  pressed  his  lips  hard  together,  conquered  himself, 
and  left  us  with  the  utmost  rapidity. 

When  Dr.  Caliban  and  I  were  alone  together,  he 
opened  the  sealed  envelope  and  read  these  words, 
written  on  a  little  slip  of  foolscap  : 

"  The  following  letter  is  accepted  by  the  Spectator, 
and  will  be  printed  next  week." 

To  this  slip  was  pinned  a  rather  dirty  half  sheet  of 
notepaper,  and  on  this  was  the  following  letter  : 

"  Balcarry  Castle, 

"  County  Mayo, 

"  Jan.  i<jih,  iQo^. 
"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Spectator . 

"  Dear  Sir, 

"  Among    your    humorous    Irish    stories    perhaps    the 
following  will  be  worthy  to  find  a  place.     A  dear  uncle  of 


ON   REVELATIONS  127 

mine,  my  father's  half-brother,  and  the  husband  of  the  talented 
E.  J.  S.,  was  bishop  of  Killibardine,  a  prelate  of  great  dis- 
tinction and  considerable  humour. 

"  I  well  remember  that  somewhere  in  the  summer  of  1869, 
his  valet  having  occasion  to  call  unexpectedly  upon  a  relative 
(butler  to  the  Duke  of  Kerry),  the  latter  observed  '  Indade, 
an'  shure  now  an'  is  that  yourself,  Pat,  Pat  asthor,  at  all,  at 
all,'  to  which  the  witty  fellow  answered,  with  the  true  Irish 
twinkle  in  his  eye,  '  Was  your  grandfather  a  monkey?' 
"  I  am  very  faithfully  yours, 

"  The  MacFfin." 

Dr.  Caliban  was  heartily  amused  by  the  tale,  and 
told  me  that  he  had  met  the  MacFfin  some  years  ago  at 
Lady  Marroway's. 

"  Nevertheless,"  he  added,  "  I  don't  think  it  would 
be  fair  to  comment  on  the  little  story.  ...  I  had 
imagined  that  something  graver  was  toward  ..." 

He  never  spoke  again  of  the  small  outlay  he  had 
made,  and  I  afterwards  found  that  it  had  been  included 
in  the  general  expenses  of  the  paper.  I  have  never 
forgotten  the  lesson,  nor  since  that  date  have  I  ever 
accepted  MSS.  and  paid  for  it  without  making  myself 
acquainted  to  some  extent  with  the  subject.  A  little 
such  foresight  upon  that  occasion  would  have  convinced 
us  that  a  letter  of  this  kind  would  never  have  found  a 
place  in  a  review  of  the  calibre  of  the  Spectator. 

Contrast  with  Dr.  Caliban's  wise  and  patriotic  con- 
duct upon  this  occasion  the  wickedness  and  folly  of 
the  Evening  German  in  the  matter  of  the  Cabinet 
Crisis. 

For  some  time  the  saner  papers,  which  see  the  Empire 
as  it  is,  had  been  issuing  such  placards  as  "  He  must 
go,"  "Make  room  for  Joseph,"  and  other  terse  and 
definite  indications  of  a  new  policy. 


128  THE  AFTERMATH 

The  Evening  German  had  for  several  days  headed  its 
leading  article,  "  Why  don't  he  resign?" 

A  member  of  the  unscrupulous  gang  who  ever  lie  in 
wait  for  whatever  is  innocent  and  enthusiastic  called, 
just  before  press,  upon  the  editor  of  the  Evoting 
German,  passing  himself  off  as  the  valet  of  the  minister 
whose  resignation  was  demanded.  He  produced  a  small 
sheet  of  MSS.,  and  affirmed  it  to  be  the  exact  account 
of  an  interview  between  the  minister  and  his  doctor, 
which  interview  the  valet  had  overheard,  "concealed," 
as  he  put  it,  "behind  an  arras."  He  said  it  would 
explain  the  situation  thoroughly.  He  received  no  less 
than  25  guineas,  and  departed. 

Now  let  the  student  read  what  follows,  and  ask 
himself  by  what  madness  a  responsible  editor  came  to 
print  a  thing  so  self-evidently  absurd. 


WHY   HE   DOES    NOT  RESIGN  ! 

We  have  received  upon  an  unimpeachable  authority 
the  verbatim  account  of  an  interview  between  him  and 
his  medical  adviser,  which  we  think  thoroughly  explains 
the  present  deadlock  in  Imperial  affairs.  Wc  are  assured 
upon  oath  that  he  was  in  bed  when  the  doctor  called 
just  before  noon  yesterday,  and  that  the  following 
dialogue  took  place  : 

Minister  {in  bed) :  Good-morning,  Doctor,  I  am  glad 
to  see  you.  What  can  I  do  for  you?  ...  I  mean,  I 
am  glad  to  see  you.  Pray  excuse  the  inadvertence  of 
my  phrase,  it  is  one  that  I  have  lately  had  to  use  not 
a  little. 


ON   REVELATIONS  129 

Doctor  :  Pray  let  me  look  at  your  tongue  and  feel 
your  pulse.  So.  We  are  getting  along  nicely.  At 
what  hour  were  you  thinking  of  rising? 

Minister  :  At  twelve,  my  usual  hour.  I  see  no 
reason  for  lying  in  bed,  Doctor.  {There  was  a  despair- 
ing tone  in  this  fhrase).  I  am  well  enough,  Doctor, 
well  enough.  {Here  he  gazed  sadly  out  of  the  window 
into  St.  James's  Park).  I  am  a  Minister,  but  I  cannot 
minister  to  a  mind  diseased  {this  rather  bitterly).  There 
is  nothing  the  matter  with  me. 

Doctor  {cheerily) :  My  dear  Mr.  ,  do  not  talk 

so.  You  will  be  spared  many,  many  useful  years,  I 
hope.  Indeed,  I  am  sure.  There  is,  as  you  say,  nothing 
tlie  matter — nothing  organically  the  matter;  this  lassi- 
tude and  nervous  exhaustion  from  which  you  suffer  is  a 
distressing,  but  a  common  symptom  of  mental  activity. 
{Here  the  doctor  dived  into  a  black  bag).  Let  me  sound 
the  chest. 

Minister:  Will  it  hurt?  {This  was  said  rather 
anxiously). 

Doctor  :  Not  a  bit  of  it.  I  only  wish  to  make 
assurance  doubly  sure — as  we  say  in  the  profession. 
{He  fui  the  stethoscope  to  the  chest  of  the  Cabinet 
Minister).  Now  draw  a  deep  breath  .  .  .  no,  deeper 
than  that  ...  a  really  deep  breath. 

Minister  {gasping)  :  I  can't. 

Doctor  :  Tut,  tut.  .  .  .  Well,  it's  all  a  question  of 
lungs.  {Here  he  moved  the  stethoscope  again).  Now 
sing. 

Minister  :  La  !  La  !  .  .  .  La ! 

Doctor  :  Nothing  wrong  with  the  lungs.  Only  a 
little  feeble  perhaps.     Do  you  take  any  exercise  ? 

9 


139  THE  AFTERMATH 

Minister  {wearUy) :   Oh  !  yes  .   .   .     I  walk  about. 
.   .   .     I  used  to  walk  a  lot  in  Ireland.   ...     I'm  not 

like  Ch n ;  he  never  takes  any  exercise  {bitterly) ; 

but  then,  he  was  brought  up  differently.  (Sadly)  Oh 
Doctor !  1  am  so  tired  !   .   .   .     My  back  aches. 

Doctor  :  Well,  Mr.  ,  a  little  rest  will  do  you 

all  the  good  in  the  world.  You  have  the  Easter  recess 
in  which  to  take  a  thorough  rest.  Do  not  lie  in  bed  all 
day  ;  get  up  about  five  and  drive  to  your  club.  What- 
ever you  do,  don't  write  or  think,  and  don't  let  them 
worry  you  with  callers.  (I'/w  Doctor  here  frefared  to 
leave). 

Minister  {hopelessly) :  Doctor  .  .  .  there  is  some- 
thing I  want  to  ask  you.   .   .   .     Can't  I  give  it  up? 

Doctor   {firmly)  :    No,    Mr.    ,    no.      Upon   no 

account.  I  have  told  your  uncle  and  your  cousins  so 
fifty  times.  It  is  a  point  upon  which  I  must  be  firm. 
Politics  are  a  necessity  to  you  all.  I  would  not  answer 
for  you  if  it  were  not  for  politics.  {Sympathetically) 
You  are  none  of  you  strong. 

Minister  {heaving  a  deep  sigh)  :  No.  I  am  not 
strong.  .  .  .  Alas  !  .  .  .  Chaplin  is.  But  then, 
Chaplin's  built  differently.  ...  I  wish  you  would  let 
me  give  it  up.  Doctor. 

Doctor  {kindly)  :  No,  my  dear  Mr. ,  no  !    Pray 

put  such  thoughts  out  of  your  head.  Every  man  must 
occupy  his  brain  and  body.  Most  men  discover  or 
choose  an  occupation,  but  I  have  not  been  a  family 
doctor  for  thirty  years  without  distinguishing  these  from 
such  rare  organisms  as  yours — and  your  family's.  The 
House  of  Commons  is  the  saving  of  you.  {The  Doctor 
here  paused,  gazed  anxiously  at  Mr.  ,   and  said 


ON   REVELATIONS  131 

slowly)  Perhaps,  though,  you  take  your  work  too 
seriously.  It  is  often  so  with  highly  strung  men.  Do 
as  little  as  you  can. 

Minister  :  I  do  .  .  .  but  still  it  wearies  me  inex- 
pressibly. 

Doctor  :  Not  so  much  as  writing  a  book  would,  or 
travel,  or  country  walks. 

Minister  {shaking  his  head)  :  I  never  felt  so  tired 
after  "  It  May  be  True,"  nor  even  after  "  I  Greatly 
Doubt  It,"  as  I  do  now  {smiling  a  little).  They 
sold  well. 

Doctor  :  And  why  ?     Because  you  were  engaged  in 

politics.     Believe  me,  dear  Mr.  ,  without  that  one 

regular  employment  you  would  do  little  or  nothing.  It 
is  the  balance-wheel  that  regulates  your  whole  system. 
Change  the  rules,  and,  if  you  will,  limit  debate  to  a 
minimum,  but  do  not  think  of  giving  up  the  one  thing 
that  keeps  up  your  circulation.  More  men  die  from 
inanition  than  I  care  to  tell  you. 

Minister  :  Very  well.  Doctor  .  .  .  {weakly  and 
quietly)  it  is  nearly  one;  I  must  sleep  .   .   .  Good-bye. 

{The  Doctor  here  went  out  on  tif-ioe.  The  Minister 
slept.     There  was  a  great  silence.) 

The  Evening  German  suffered  severely,  and  would 
have  been  ruined  but  for  the  prompt  action  of  the 
Frankfort  House;  and  the  whole  incident  shows  as 
clearly  as  possible  what  perils  surround  the  most  tempt- 
ing, but  the  most  speculative,  sort  of  journalistic  enter- 
prise. 

The  student  may  tell  me — and  justly — that  I  have 
offered  him  none  but  negative  examples.     I  will  com- 


132  THE  AFTERMATH 

plete  his  instruction  by  printing  one  of  the  best  chosen 
Revelations  I  know. 

At  the  time  when  a  number  of  letters  addressed  to 
Mr.  Kruger  by  various  public  men  were  captured,  and 
very  rightly  published,  a  certain  number  were,  for 
reasons  of  State,  suppressed.  To  Dr.  Caliban,  reasons 
of  State  were  no  reasons ;  he  held  that  no  servant  of  the 
people  had  a  right  to  keep  the  people  in  ignorance. 

Within  a  week,  a  detective  in  his  employ  had  brought 
a  little  sheaf  of  documents,  which,  judged  by  internal 
evidence  alone,  were  plainly  genuine. 

They  were  printed  at  once.  They  have  never  since 
been  challenged. 

I. 

497,  Jubilee  Row, 
B'ham, 

19.7. '99. 
Dear  Sir, 

We  must  respectfully  press  for  the  payment  of, 
our  account.  The  terms  upon  which  the  ammunition 
was  furnished  were  strictly  cash,  and,  as  you  will  see 
by  the  terms  of  our  letter  of  the  15th  last,  we  cannot 
tolerate  any  further  delay.  If  we  do  not  hear  from  you 
relative  to  same  by  next  mail,  we  shall  be  compelled  to 
put  the  matter  into  the  hands  of  our  solicitors. 
Yours,  etc., 

John  Standfast, 
Pro  Karl  Bififenheimer  and  Co. 


ON   REVELATIONS  133 

II. 

Yacht  Fleur  de  Lys. 

Pkince  ne  Daigne. 

Paleeme, 

SiCILE. 
a,  la  feste  de  VAssomfiion  de  la  T.S.V. 
(Vieux  Style) 
Van  de  N.S.f.C.     MCM  (1900). 

Monsieur  Mon  Frere, 

Nous  vous  envoyons  nos  remerciemens  pour  vos 
souhaits  et  vous  assurons  de  la  parf  aicte  amictie  qui  Hera 
toujours  nos  couronnes  allies.     Faictes.     Continuez. 

Agreez,   Monsieur   Mon   Frere,   I'assurance  de  notre 
consideration  Royale  la  plus  distinguee. 

Orleans, 
pour  le  Roy, 

Chetif. 
Vu,  pour  copie  conforme. 

La  Seneschal,  Bru. 

III. 

Offices  of  the  "  Si^cle,"  Paris, 

Chef-lieu  of  the 
department  of  the  Seine,  France. 
6,  Thermidor,  io8. 

My  good  Kruger, 

It  is  evidently  necessary  that  I  should  speak  out 
to  you  in  plain  English.  I  can't  go  into  a  long  disser- 
tation, but  if  you  will  read  the  books  I  send  herewith, 
The  Origin  of  Species,  Spencer's  Sociology,  Grant 
Allen's  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  etc.,  you  will 
see  why  I  can't  back  you  up.     As  for  your  contemptible 


134  THE  AFTERMATH 

offer,  I  cast  it  back  at  you  with  disdain.  My  name 
alone  should  have  protected  me  from  such  insults.  I 
would  have  you  know  that  my  paper  represents  French 
opinion  in  England,  and  is  now  owned  by  an  inter- 
national company.  T  am  the  irremovable  editor. 
Yours  with  reserve, 

Yves  Guvot. 

P.S. — I  have  been  a  Cabinet  Minister.  I  send  you 
a  circular  of  our  new  company.  It  is  a  good  thing. 
Push  it  along. 


IV. 

The  Chaplaincy, 

Barford  College, 
Old  St.  Winifred^s  Day,  iqoo. 

My  dear  Mr.  Kruger, 

Your  position  is  at  once  interesting  and  peculiar, 
and  deserves,  as  you  say,  my  fullest  attention.  On  the 
one  hand  (as  you  well  remark)  you  believe  you  have  a  right 
to  your  independence,  and  that  our  Government  has  no 
moral  right  to  interfere  in  your  domestic  affairs.  You 
speak  warmly  of  Mr.  Chamberlain  and  describe  him  as 
lacking  in  common  morality  or  (as  we  put  it)  in  breeding. 
I  think  you  are  hardly  fair.  Mr.  Chamberlain  has  his 
own  morality,  and  in  that  summing  up  of  all  ethics 
which  we  in  England  call  "manners,"  he  is  indis- 
tinguishable from  other  gentlemen  of  our  class.  He 
has  had  a  great  deal  to  bear  and  he  has  latterly  borne  it 
in  silence.  It  is  hardly  the  part  of  a  generous  foe  to 
taunt  him  now.  I  fear  you  look  upon  these  matters  a 
little  narrowly   and   tend  to  accept  one  aspect  as  the 


ON   REVELATIONS  135 

absolute.  The  truth  is  that  international  morality  must 
always  be  largely  Utilitarian,  and  in  a  very  interesting 
little  book  by  Beeker  it  is  even  doubted  whether  what  we 
call  "ethics"  have  any  independent  existence.  This 
new  attitude  (which  we  call  "  moral  anarchism  ")  has 
lately  cast  a  great  hold  upon  our  younger  men  and  is 
full  of  interesting  possibilities.  If  you  meet  Milner  you 
should  discuss  the  point  with  him.  I  assure  you  this 
school  is  rapidly  ousting  the  old  "comparative-positive" 
in  which  he  and  Curzon  were  trained.  There  is  a  great 
deal  of  self-realisation  going  on  also.  Lord  Mestenvaux 
(whom  you  have  doubtless  met — he  was  a  director  of  the 
Johannesburg  Alcohol  Concession)  is  of  my  opinion. 

Believe  me,  my  dear  Mr.  Kruger,  with  the  fullest 
and  warmest  sympathy  for  such  of  your  grievances  as 
may  be  legitimate,  and  with  the  ardent  prayer  that  the 
result  of  this  deplorable  quarrel  may  turn  out  to  be  the 
best  for  both  parties, 

Your  affectionate  Friend  of  old  days, 

JosHiA  Lambkin,  M.A., 

Fellow  and  Chaplain. 

V. 

{Telegram.) 

Send  orders  payable  Amsterdam  immediate.  Liberal 

party    clamouring  .   .   .   (name    illegible)    risen    to    ten 

thousand,  market  firm  and  rising.     Waste  no  money  on 

comic  paper.     Not  Read. 

(JJnsigned.) 

Finally  this  damning  piece  of  evidence  must  close  the 
terrible  series. 


136  THE  AFTERMATH 

VI. 

To  the  Rev.  Ehenezer  Biggs,  Capetown. 

The  House  of  Commons, 
My  dear  Sir,  ^^''^  '°'^'  '^99. 

You  put  me  in  a  very  difficult  position,  for,  on 
the  one  hand,  I  cannot,  and  would  not,  work  against  the 
interests  of  my  country,  and  on  the  other  hand,  I  am 
convinced  that  Mr.  Chamberlain  is  determined  to  plunge 
that  country  into  the  war  spoken  of  by  Jolin  in  Revela- 
tion ix.  Anything  I  can  do  for  peace  I  will,  but  for 
some  reason  or  other  the  Times  will  not  insert  my  letters, 
though  I  write  to  them  twice  and  sometimes  thrice  in  one 
day.  Sir  Alfred  Milner  was  once  very  rude  to  me. 
He  is  a  weak  man  morally,  mainly  intent  upon  "  getting 
on";  he  has  agreed  since  his  youth  with  every  single 
person  of  influence  (except  myself)  whom  he  happened 
to  come  across,  and  is  universally  liked.  I  fear  that  no 
one's  private  influence  can  do  much.  The  London  Press 
has  been  bought  in  a  lump  by  two  financiers.  Perhaps 
a  little  waiting  is  the  best  thing.  There  is  sure  to  be  a 
reaction,  and  after  all,  Mr.  Chamberlain  is  a  man  of  a 
very  low  order.  His  mind,  I  take  it,  is  not  unlike  his 
face.  He  thinks  very  little  and  very  clearly.  .  .  I 
have  really  nothing  more  to  say. 

Always  your  sincere  friend, 

Edward  Bayton. 

No  one  knew  better  than  Dr.  Caliban  that  a  Revelation 
is  but  weakened  by  comment.  But  the  war  was  at  its 
height,  and  he  could  not  read  without  disgust  such 
words,  written  in  such  a  place  by  such  a  man. 


ON   REVELATIONS  i37 

He  added  the  note  : 

"  We  understand  that  the  law  officers  of  the  Crown  are 
debating  whether  or  no  the  concluding  sentences  of  this  dis- 
graceful letter  can  be  made  to  come  within  26  Edward  III., 
cap.  jj,  defining  high  treason.  It  is  certainly  not  a  physical 
attack  upon  the  Person,  Consort,  or  offspring  of  the  Crown, 
nor  is  it  (strictly  speaking)  giving  aid  to  the  Queen's  enemies. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  devoutly  hoped  that  the  attack  on 
Mr.  Chamberlain  can  be  made  to  fall  under  32  Henry  VIII., 
I,  whereby  it  is  felony  to  strike  or  'provoke'  the  King's 
servants  within  the  precincts  of  the  Palace.  The  infamous 
screed  was  certainly  written  in  a  palace,  and  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain is  as  certainly  a  servant  of  the  Queen.  He  certainly  was 
provoked — nay  nettled.  The  latter  clauses  of  the  act,  condemn- 
ing those  who  attack  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  to  be 
roasted  alive,  have,  of  course,  fallen  into  desuetude.  The 
earlier,  milder,  and  more  general  clauses  stand,  and  should 
be  enforced." 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  think  it  was  an  error 
to  pen  that  comment.  Strong  expressions,  used  in  a 
time  of  high  party  feeling,  may  look  exaggerated  when 
they  survive  into  quieter  times.  But  if  it  was  an  error, 
it  was  the  only  error  that  can  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  a 
just  and  great  man  in  the  whole  course  of  forty  years, 
during  which  period  he  occasionally  edited  as  many  as 
five  journals  at  a  time. 


X 

SPECIAL  PROSE 

Mrs.  Caliban  begged  me  to  add  a  few  words  on 
"  Special  Prose,"  and  to  subjoin  an  example  of  that 
manner.  She  has  suggested  for  the  latter  purpose  Mrs. 
Railston's  "Appreciation  of  William  Shakespeare," 
written  as  a  preface  for  the  Charing  Cross  Shakespeare 
in  1897.  She  has  even  been  at  the  pains  of  asking 
Mrs.  Railston's  leave  to  have  it  included  in  this  volume, 
a  permission  that  was  at  once  granted,  accompanied  with 
the  courteous  request  that  Mrs.  Railston's  name,  address, 
and  private  advertisement  should  accompany  the  same. 

Were  I  dependent  upon  my  own  judgment  alone,  the 
wisdom  of  adding  such  a  division  at  the  close  of  these 
essays  might  seem  doubtful.  Special  Prose  is  an 
advanced  kind  of  literature,  too  great  an  attraction  to 
which  might  at  first  confuse  rather  than  aid  the  student ; 
and  I  should  hardly  make  a  place  for  it  in  a  straight- 
forward little  Textbook. 

Mrs.  Caliban's  wishes  in  all  matters  concerning  this 
work  must  be  observed,  and  I  have  done  what  she 
desired    me,    even    to    the    degree    of    printing    Mrs. 

Railston's  advertisement,  though  I  am  certain  that  great 

Authoress  does  herself  harm  by  this  kind  of  insistence. 

...     It  is  no  business  of  mine.   .   .   . 

It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  prose  of  this  sort  is  the 

highest  form  of  our  Art,  and  should  be  the  ultimate 

138 


SPECIAL   PROSE  139 

goal  of  every  reader  of  this  Guide.  If,  however,  the 
student  is  bewildered  in  his  first  attempt  to  decipher  it 
(as  he  very  well  may  be),  my  advice  to  him  is  this  :  let 
him  mark  the  point  to  which  he  has  persevered,  and  then 
put  the  whole  thing  aside  until  he  has  had  some  little 
further  practice  in  English  letters.  Then  let  him  return, 
fresh  from  other  work,  some  weeks  later,  and  see  if  he 
cannot  penetrate  still  further  into  the  close-knit  texture. 
Soon  he  will  find  it  almost  like  his  own  tongue,  and  will 
begin  to  love  and  to  understand. 

Not  many  months  will  pass  before  it  will  mean  to  him 
something  more  than  life,  as  he  once  imagined,  could 
contain. 

Having  said  so  much,  let  me  hasten  to  obey  Mrs. 
Caliban's  command. 

WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE 

A«  Affreciaiion. 

By  Margaret  Railston. 

How  very  manifestly  well  did  not  Montaigne  (I  think 
it  was)  say  in  his  essay  upon  Value  that  the  ' '  inner  part 
of  Poesy  is  whilom  hid,  whilom  bare,  and  it  matters 
little  whether  it  be  bare  or  hidden. ' '  That  was  a  sentence 
such  as  our  Wordsworth  might  have  quoted  at  the  high 
court  of  Plato  when  the  poets  were  arraigned  as  un- 
worthy to  be  rooted  in  his  Republic.  For  the  most  part 
these  dear  poets  of  our  tongue  will  rather  have  it  bare 
than  hidden,  leaving  the  subtleties  of  "  The  Misan- 
thrope"  to  another  race,  and  themselves  preferring  the 
straight  verbal  stab  of  "The  Idiot  Boy"  or  "Danny 
Deever  "  ;  so  that  many  of  us  see  nothing  in  the  Rhymed 


I40  THE  AFTERMATH 

Heroics  of  the  Grand  Sifecle.     Yet  Moli^re  also  had 

genius. 

"  Moliere  a  du  genie  et  Christian  6i6  beau." 

That  sentence  given  nasally  by  a  Coquelin  to  a  theatre- 
full  of  People  of  the  Middle-Class  should  convince  also 
us  of  the  Hither- North  that  flowers  may  blow  in  any 
season  and  be  as  various  as  multiplicity  may. 

William  Shakespeare,  without  all  question  and  beyond 
any  repining,  is — or  rather  was — the  first  of  our  Poets, 
and  was — or  rather  is — the  first  to-day.  So  that,  with 
him  for  a  well  and  the  Jacobean  Bible  for  a  further 
spring  of  effort,  our  English  Poets  make  up  ("  build  " 
Milton  called  it)  the  sounding  line.  But  William 
Shakespeare  also  is  of  us  :  he  will  have  it  on  the 
surface  or  not  at  all ;  as  a  man  hastening  to  beauty, 
too  eager  to  delve  by  the  way.  And  with  it  all  how  he 
succeeds  !  What  grace  and  what  appreciation  in  epithet, 
what  subtle  and  subconscious  effects  of  verb  !  What 
resonant  and  yet  elusive  diction  !  It  is  true  Shakes- 
peare, that  line — 

"  Rough  winds  do  shake  the  darling  buds  of  May." 

And  that  other — 

"  Or  stoops  with  the  Remover  to  remove." 

And  these  are  true  Shakespeare  because  in  each  there  is 
we  know  not  what  of  ivory  shod  with  steel.  A  mixture 
of  the  light  and  the  strong,  of  the  subtle  and  the  intense 
rescues  his  simple  words  from  oblivion.  But  another, 
not  of  our  blood,  would  have  hidden  far  more ;  he  shows 
it  all,  frankly  disdaining  artifice. 

Also  the  great  Elizabethan  needs  room  for  his  giant 
limbs,  for  his  frame  of  thought  and  his  thews  of  diction. 


SPECIAL   PROSE  141 

Cite  him  just  too  shortly,  choose  but  a  hair's  breadth  too 
mickle  an  ensample  of  his  work,  and  it  is  hardly  Poesy, 
nay,  hardly  Prose.  Thus  you  shall  have  Othello — the 
Moor  they  call  him — betrayed  and  raging,  full  of  an 
African  Anger.  What  does  he  say  of  it?  Why  very 
much ;  but  if  you  are  of  those  that  cut  out  their  cameos 
too  finely  ;  you  slip  into  quoting  this  merely  : 
"  0th.     Hum  !     Hum  !" 

And  that  is  not  our  Shakespeare  at  all,  nor  e'en  our 
Othello.  Oh  !  no,  it  is  nothing  but  a  brutish  noise, 
meaning  nothing,  empty  of  tragedy,  unwished  for. 

It  was  Professor  Goodie  who  said  that  "  none  needed 
the  spaces  of  repose  more  than  Shakespeare,"  and  taught 
us  in  these  words  that  the  poet  must  have  hills  and 
valleys ;  must  recline  if  he  is  to  rise.  But  does  not 
Shakespeare,  even  in  his  repose,  seem  to  create?  The 
Professor  will  indeed  quote  to  us  the  mere  sprawling 
leisure  of  Stratford,  and  shame  us  with  such  lines  as — 

"  Mac. — The  Devil  damn  thee  black,  thou  cream-faced  loon, 
Where  got'st  thou  that  goose  look?" 

Which  is  Shakespeare  at  full  length.  But  we  also,  that 
are  not  over  sure  of  Shakespeare's  failing,  can  answer 
him  with  such  excerpts  as  these  : 

"  Hen. — Therefore  do  thou,  stiff-set  Northumberland, 
Retire  to  Chester,  and  my  cousin  here, 
The  noble  Bedford,  hie  to  Glo'ster  straight 
And  give  our  Royal  ordinance  and  word 
That  in  this  fit  and  strife  of  empery 
No  loss  shall  stand  account.     To  this  compulsion 
I  pledge  my  sword,  my  person  and  my  honour 
On  the  Great  Seal  of  England  :  so  fareweU. 
Swift  to  your  charges  :  nought  was  ever  done 
Unless  at  some  time  it  were  first  begun." 


142  THE  AFTERMATH 

This  also  is  Sliakespeare  in  iiis  repose,  but  a  better 
Shakespeare  than  he  whom  the  Professor  would  chal- 
lenge. For  though  there  is  here  no  work  or  strain  in 
the  thing,  yet  it  reeks  of  English.  It  is  like  the  mist 
over  our  valleys  at  evening,  so  effortless  is  it  and  so 
reposeful,  and  yet  so  native.  Note  the  climax  "  On  the 
Great  Seal  of  England"  and  the  quaint,  characteristic 
folklore  of  the  concluding  couplet,  with  its  rhyming 
effect.  Note  also  how  sparing  is  William  Shakespeare 
of  the  strong  qualificative,  however  just  it  may  be.  For 
when  our  moderns  will  speak  hardly  of  "  the  tolerant 
kine  "  or  "  the  under-lit  sky,"  or  of  "  the  creeping  river 
like  a  worm  upturned,  with  silver  belly  stiffened  in  the 
grass,"  though  they  be  by  all  this  infinitely  stronger, 
yet  are  they  but  the  more  condensed  and  self-belittled. 
Shakespeare  will  write  you  ten  lines  and  have  in  all  but 
one  just  and  sharp  adjective — "stiff-set";  for  the  rest 
they  are  a  common  highway ;  he  cares  ijot. 

And  here  he  is  in  the  by-paths ;  a  meadow  of  Poesy. 
I  have  found  it  hidden  away  in  one  of  the  latter  plays ; 
the  flowers  of  his  decline  : 

"  t^ear  no  more  the  heat  o'  the  sun, 
Nor  the  furious  winter's  rages; 
Now  thine  earthly  task  is  done, 
Thou'rt  gone  home  and  ta'en  thy  wages. 
Golden  lads  and  lasses  must, 
Like  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust." 

There  is  in  that  a  line  I  swear  no  one  but  Shakespeare 
would  have  dared.     "Thou'rt  gone  home  an  ta'en  thy 
wages."      Commonplace?      A   text   on    the    wall?      A 
sermon-tag?    All  you  will,  but  a  frame  for  glory. 
This  then  is  William  Shakespeare  in  a  last  word.     A 


SPECIAL   PROSE  143 

man  at  work  full  of  doing ;  the  F  ^pyov  :  glad  if  you 
saw  the  mark  of  the  chisel ;  still  more  glad  if  you  did 
not  see  it.  And  if  it  be  queried  why  are  such  things 
written  of  him  ?  Why  do  we  of  the  last  and  woeful  days 
turn  and  return  the  matter  of  our  past  ?  We  say  this. 
Vixere  Fortes;  that  is,  no  fame  were  enduring  save  by 
continued  iterance  and  echo  of  similar  praise,  nor  any 
life  well  earned  in  the  public  sheets  that  dared  not  touch 
on  any  matter  and  remodel  all.  It  is  for  ourselves  and 
for  William  Shakespeare  that  these  things  are  done. 
For  ourselves,  that  is  a  private  thing  to  hide  under  the 
veil  of  the  Home-lofe.  For  William  Shakespeare,  that 
is  the  public  duty,  that  his  fame  may  not  fail  in  the 
noise  of  new  voices.  And  we  can  borrow  from  him  and 
return  to  him  what  he  said  of  another  with  such  distinc- 
tion of  plane  and  delicate  observance  of  value  : 

"  So  long  as  men  shall  breathe  and  eyes  can  see, 
This  lives,  and  living,  this  gives  life  to  thee." 

[Notices  in  this  manner  can  be  furnished  at  reasonable 
notice  upon  any  poet,  preferably  a  young  or  a  modern 
pott,  on  the  usual  terms.  The  style  is  produced  in  seven 
distinct  sizes,  of  which  this  is  No.  3.  Please  state  No. 
when  ordering.    All  envelopes  to  be  addressed. 

Mrs.  Margaret  Railston, 

c/o  Charlie  Bernberg, 

48,  Upper  Gannimore  Gardens, 
Shepherd's  Bush,  W, 

All  envelopes  to  be  marked  "  Appreciation.^'  Accounts 
monthly.  All  cheques  to  be  crossed  ^^  Becker,  Becker, 
and  Bernberg." ~\ 


APPENDIX 


PRICES   CURRENT 

In  all  ordinary  lines  Prices  were  well  maintained  and 
rising  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Spanish- American  War. 
They  rose  sharply  thenceforward  till  the  second  week  of 
the  war  in  South  Africa,  since  which  date  they  have 
been  sagging,  touching  bed  rock  in  the  spring  of  this 
year  (March,  1903).  There  has  been  a  slight  reaction 
since  the  beginning  of  the  season,  but  it  is  not  supported, 
and  the  market  is  still  extremely  dull.  Patriotic  Poems 
have  fallen  out  of  sight,  and  Criticism  is  going  begging  : 
in  some  offices  books  are  no  longer  given  to  their  reviewers  : 
sub-editors  have  latterly  been  asked  to  bring  their  own 
suppers.  The  pinch  is  being  felt  everywhere.  Police 
reports  are  on  piece-work  and  the  Religious  Column  is 
shut  down  to  half  shifts.  Leader  writers  have  broken 
from  1,100  a  year  to  300.  Editors  have  suffered  an  all- 
round  cut  in  wages  of  25  percent.  Publishers' carrying- 
over  days  are  more  anxious  than  ever.  Several  first-class 
houses  were  hammered  on  the  last  contango,  and  the 
Banks  are  calling  in  loans.  Private  capital  can  hardly 
be  obtained  save  for  day-to-day  transactions,  and  even 
so  at  very  high  rates  of  interest.  The  only  lines  that  are 
well  maintained  are  City  Articles  and  Special  Prose. 
Snippets  are  steady. 

145  10 


146 


THE  AFTERMATH 


The  following  list  is  taken  from  Hunter's  Handbook, 
and  represents  Prices  at  the  close  of  May  : 


PROSE 


{Prices  in  shillings 

Special  Prose        

Street  Accidents 

Reviews 

Police  Court  Notices 
Guaranteed  Libels 
Unguaranteed  ditto 
Deferred  ditto 
Pompous  Leaders 
Smart  Leaders 
Ten-line  Leaderettes 

Political  Appeals 

Attacks  on  Foreign  Nations 
Dramatic  Criticism 
Historical  Work 

Religious  Notes    ... 
Attacks  upon  Christianity 


VERSE 

{Prices  in  fence  fer  line.) 

Bad  Verse  ...  No  price  can  be  given — very  variable. 

Good  minor  Verse     3d.  (much  the  same  as  last  year). 
Special  Verse     ...  i/- (a heavy  fall). 


per  thousand  words.) 

Rise  or  Fall. 

30/- 

35/- 

Unchanged. 

10/- 

12/- 

-   5/- 

7/6 

10/- 

-  20/- 

.     15/- 

i8/- 

-   5/- 

^     25/- 

30/- 

-   3/- 

5/- 

7/- 

+   2/- 

14/- 

16/- 

+  4/- 

8/- 

10/- 

-25/-! 

•       9/- 

11/6 

+   3/- 

.     10/- 

12/- 

Unchanged. 

•     15/- 

17/- 

-30/- 

3/- 

3/6 

-48/-!! 

.     20/- 

25/- 

Unchanged. 

— 

6d.? 

(Practically 
no  demand). 

.     12/- 

18/- 

-   8/- 

4/- 

4/6 

-   5/-     (A 

very  heavy  fall  for  this 

kind  of  matter). 

APPENDIX  147 


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148  THE  AFTERMATH 

(The  Sections  dealing  with  "The  Detection  of 
Classical  Authors"  and  "The  Vivid  Presenta- 
tion OF  History"  have  been  omitted  by  request  of 
the  Family.     It  is  perhaps  as  well.) 


NOTE  ON  TITLES 

The  young  journalist  will  never  make  an  error  as  to  the 
title  of  an  individual,  and  his  proper  style  and  address, 
if  he  will  but  learn  to  trust  the  books  of  reference  pro- 
vided by  the  office. 

They  are  far  more  accurate  than  other  works  of  the 
kind.*  Contrast,  for  instance,  Bow  ley's  Peerage  and 
Baronetage  with  Bowley's  Register  of  Events  during  the 
Past  Year. 

What  may  be  called  "  derivative  titles  "  differ  in  the 
most  complicated  manner  according  to  the  rank  of  the 
parent.  It  would  be  quite  impossible  for  the  journalist 
to  attempt  to  learn  them.  He  had  far  better  write  plain 
"  Lord  "  and  "  Lady  "  where  he  has  occasion  to,  and 
on  all  other  occasions  whatsoever,  "Mr."  or,  if  he 
prefer  the  term,  "  Esquire."  In  conversation  no  Lord 
should  be  addressed  as  "My  Lord,"  but  a  Bishop 
should  always  be  so  addressed ;  no  Duke  should  be 
called  "Your  Grace"  to  his  face,  but  it  is  courteous 
to  bestow  this  honour  upon  an  Archbishop.  It  is 
still  more  important  to  avoid  the  term  "milady"  in 
speaking  to  the  consorts  of  the  above  named,  especially 

*  They  are  often  inaccurate  with  regard  to  the  past  history 
of  the  families  mentioned,  and  very  often  wrong  in  the  spelling 
of  the  family  name;  but  these  details  are  furnished  by  the 
families  themselves,  upon  whom  the  responsibility  must  rest. 


APPENDIX  149 

in  the  case  of  uibhopb'  wives,  to  whom  the  title  does  not 
apply.  Baronets,  on  the  other  hand,  must  always  be 
addressed  as  "  Sir,"  followed  by  a  Christian  name. 
The  omission  to  do  this  has  led  to  grievous  trouble.  The 
principal  English  titles  are  :  Prince,  Duke,  Marquis, 
Marquess  (a  more  recent  creation),  Earl,  Baron;  then 
comes  a  division;  then  Irish  Peers,  Baronets,  Knights, 
and  finally  Members  of  the  Victorian  Order. 

The  principal  foreign  titles  are :  Count,  Viscount 
(which  by  the  w^ay  is  also  an  English  title,  but  I  forgot 
it),  Vidame,  Chevalier,  Excellency,  Graf,  Furst,  Mar- 
grave, Baron,  Boyar,  Monsignor,  and  Grandee — the 
latter  used  only  in  Spain,  Ceuta,  and  the  other  Spanish 
dominions  beyond  the  seas. 

Imperial  titles  are  :  The  Maharajah,  the  Maharanee, 
the  Akon  of  Swat,  the  Meresala  of  Baghirmi,  the  Oyo 
of  Oya,  the  Allemami  of  Foutazallam,  the  Ameer,  the 
Emir,  the  Bally-o-Gum  of  Abe-o-Kuta,*  and  others  too 
numerous  to  mention.  All  these  should,  in  general,  be 
addressed  as  "Your  Highness." 

Colonials  are  called  "  The  Honourable." 


NOTE  ON  STYLE 

One  does  well  to  have  by  one  a  few  jottings  that  will 
enable  one  to  add  to  one's  compositions  what  one  calls 
style  in  case  it  is  demanded  of  one  by  an  editor. 

I  would  not  insist  too  much  upon  the  point;  it  is 
simple  enough,  and  the  necessity  of  which  I  speak  does 
not  often  crop  up.     But  editors  differ  very  much  among 

*  I  omit  the  ex-Jumbi  of  Koto-Koto,  a  rebellious  upstart 
whom  the  Imperial  Government  has  very  properly  deposed. 


I50  THE  AFTERMATH 

themselves,  and  every  now  and  then  one  gets  a  manu- 
script returned  with  the  note,  "please  improve  style," 
in  blue  pencil,  on  the  margin.  If  one  had  no  idea  as  to 
the  meaning  of  this  a  good  deal  of  time  might  be  wasted, 
so  I  will  add  here  what  are  considered  to  be  the  five 
principal  canons  of  style  or  good  English. 

The  first  canon,  of  course,  is  that  style  should  have 
Distinction.  Distinction  is  a  quality  much  easier  to 
attain  than  it  looks.  It  consists,  on  the  face  of  it,  in 
the  selection  of  peculiar  words  and  their  arrangement 
in  an  odd  and  perplexing  order,  and  the  objection  is 
commonly  raised  that  such  irregularities  cannot  be  rapidly 
acquired.  Thus  the  Chaplain  of  Barford,  preaching 
upon  style  last  Holy  Week,  remarked  "  there  is  a 
natural  tendency  in  stating  some  useless  and  empty 
thing  to  express  oneself  in  a  common  or  vulgar  manner." 
That  is  quite  true,  but  it  is  a  tendency  which  can  easily 
be  corrected,  and  I  think  that  that  sentence  I  have  just 
quoted  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  reverend  gentleman's 
own  deficiencies. 

Of  course  no  writer  is  expected  to  write  or  even  to 
speak  in  this  astonishing  fashion,  but  what  is  easier  than 
to  go  over  one's  work  and  strike  out  ordinary  v/ords? 
There  should  be  no  hesitation  as  to  what  to  put  in  their 
place.  Halliwell's  "  Dictionary  of  Archaic  and  Pro- 
vincial Words"  will  give  one  all  the  material  one  may 
require.  Thus  "  lettick  "  is  charming  Rutlandshire  for 
"decayed"  or  "putrescent,"  and  "  swinking "  is  a 
very  good  alternative  for  "working."  It  is  found  in 
Piers  Plowman. 

It  is  very  easy  to  draw  up  a  list  of  such  unusual 
words,  each  corresponding  with  some  ordinary  one,  and 


APPENDIX  151 

to  pin  it  up  where  it  will  meet  your  eye.  In  all  this 
matter  prose  follows  very  much  the  same  rules  as  were 
discovered  and  laid  down  for  verse  on  page  86. 

The  second  canon  of  style  is  that  it  should  be  obscure, 
universally  and  without  exception.  The  disturbance  of 
the  natural  order  of  words  to  which  I  have  just  alluded 
is  a  great  aid,  but  it  is  not  by  any  means  the  only  way 
to  achieve  the  result.  One  should  also  on  occasion  use 
several  negatives  one  after  the  other,  and  the  sly  correc- 
tion of  punctuation  is  very  useful.  I  have  known  a 
fortune  to  be  made  by  the  omission  of  a  full  stop,  and 
a  comma  put  right  in  between  a  noun  and  its  adjective 
was  the  beginning  of  Daniel  Witton's  reputation.  A 
foreign  word  misspelt  is  also  very  useful.  Still  more 
useful  is  some  allusion  to  some  unimportant  historical 
person  or  event  of  which  your  reader  cannot  possibly 
have  heard. 

As  to  the  practice,  which  has  recently  grown  up,  of 
writing  only  when  one  is  drunk,  or  of  introducing  plain 
lies  into  every  sentence,  they  are  quite  unworthy  of  the 
stylist  properly  so  called,  and  can  neyer  permanently 
add  to  one's  reputation. 

The  third  canon  of  style  is  the  occasional  omission  of 
a  verb  or  of  the  predicate.  Nothing  is  more  agreeably 
surprising,  and  nothing  more  effective.  I  have  known 
an  honest  retired  major-general,  while  reading  a  novel 
in  his  club,  to  stop  puzzling  at  one  place  for  an  hour  or 
more  in  his  bewilderment  at  this  delightful  trick,  and 
for  years  after  he  would  exclaim  with  admiration  at  the 
style  of  the  writer. 

The  fourth  canon  of  style  is  to  use  metafhors  of  a 
striking,  violent,  and  wholly  novel  kind,  in  the  place  of 


152  THE  AFTERMATH 

plain  statement  :  as,  to  say  "  the  classics  were  grafted 
on  the  standing  stirp  of  his  mind  rather  than  planted  in 
its  soil,"  which  means  that  the  man  had  precious  little 
Greek,  or  again,  ' '  we  propose  to  canalise,  not  to  dam, 
the  current  of  Afghan  development,"  which  means  that 
the  commander  of  our  forces  in  India  strongly  refused 
to  campaign  beyond  the  Khyber. 

This  method,  which  is  invaluable  for  the  purpose  of 
flattering  the  rich,  is  very  much  used  among  the  clergy, 
and  had  its  origin  in  our  great  Universities,  where  it  is 
employed  to  conceal  ignorance,  and  to  impart  tone  and 
vigour  to  the  tedium  of  academic  society.  The  late 
Bishop  of  Barchester  was  a  past  master  of  this  manner, 
and  so  was  Diggin,  the  war  correspondent,  who  first 
talked  of  a  gun  "  coughing  "  at  one,  and  was  sent  home 
by  Lord  Kitchener  for  lying. 

The  fifth  canon  of  style  is,  that  when  you  are  bored 
with  writing  and  do  not  know  what  to  say  next,  you 
should  hint  at  unutterable  depths  of  idea  by  the  intro- 
duction of  a  row  of  asterisks. 


THE  ODE 

The  writing  of  Odes  seems  to  have  passed  so  completely 
out  of  our  literary  life,  that  I  thought  it  inadvisable  to 
incorporate  any  remarks  upon  it  with  the  standing  part 
of  my  book,  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  saying  a  few 
words  upon  it  in  the  Appendix,  since  1  am  convinced 
that  it  is  destined  to  play  a  great  part  in  the  near 
future. 


APPENDIX  153 

I  will  take  for  my  example  the  well-known  Ode 
^almost  the  only  successful  modern  example  of  this 
form  of  composition)  which  was  sung  on  the  beach  at 
Calshott  Castle,  by  a  selected  choir,  on  the  return  of 
]Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  from  South  Africa ;  and  I  will 
use  some  passages  from  it  in  order  to  emphasize  the 
leading  principle  that  the  Ode  defends  for  its  effective- 
ncss  almost  etiiirely  upon  the  music  accompanying  it. 

Thus,  Mr.  Daniel  Witton's  opening  lines  : 

"  WTiat  stranger  barque  from  what  imperial  shores 
The  angry  Solent  dares  to  what  mysterious  goal?" 

would  seem  tame  enough  were  it  not  for  the  wonderful 
rising  of  the  notes  which  accompany  them ;  and  the 
famous  outburst  : 

"  She  to  Southampton  steers  !" 

is  equally  dependent  upon  the  crash  of  music  and  the 
combined  voices  of  the  whole  choir.  It  is  difficult  for 
us,  who  have  heard  it  rendered  in  the  Albert  Hall,  to 
appreciate  what  the  words  would  be  without  this  adven- 
titious aid.     Even  the  lovely  single  line, 

•'  Lift    up    your    head,    Southampton,    dry    your    honourable 
tears," 

would  be  less  without  the  delicate  soprano  floating  above 
its  syllables. 

I  will  admit  that  the  passage  on  the  bodyguard  of 
National  Scouts  is  very  fine,  but  then,  precisely  in 
jjroportion  as  it  is  effective  (jud  literature,  it  fails  to 
impress  when  accompanied  by  music,  though  the  author 
of  the  score  was  wise  enough  to  set  it  to  a  somewhat 
monotonous   recitative.      If   the   student   will   read  the 


154  THE  AFTERMATH 

lines  slowly  to  himself,  first  with,  and  then  without, 
the  notes,  he  will  see  what  I  mean. 

"  And  who  more  fit  than  they 
\Miose  better  judgment  led  them  to  betray 
An  aged  leader  and  a  failing  cause 
Because — 
Because  they  found  it  pay." 

Mr.  Daniel  Witton  did  not  write  that  word  "because  " 
twice  over  in  his  original  manuscript.      He  put  it   in 
twice  to  please  the  musician   (whose  ignorance  of  the 
English  tongue  was  a  great  handicap  throughout),  and, 
as  I  at  least  think,  he  made  an  error  in  so  doing. 
All  that  passage  where  the  great  politician 
"...  taking  off  his  hat," 
comes  into  the  palace  at  Pretoria,  where 

"  .  .  .  in  awful  state  alone, 
Alone,  the  scientific  Monist  sat, 
Who  guards  our  realm,  extends  its  narrow  bounds, 
And  to  achieve  his  end. 
Is  quite  prepared  to  spend 

The  inconceivably  imperial  sum  of  twice  three  hundred 
times  five  hundred  thousand  pounds," 

shows  the  grave  difficulty  of  wedding  the  verse  to  the 
music.  The  last  line  is  intolerably  clumsy,  when  read 
without  the  air  accompanying  it ;  and  the  whole  illus- 
trates very  well  my  contention  that  music  should  be  the 
chief  thing  in  the  composition  of  an  ode,  and  that  the 
libretto  should  be  entirely  subservient  to  it. 

A  still  better  example  is  found  in  the  great  chorus 
"  Pretoria,"  which  begins — 

"  Pretoria  with  her  hundred  towers 
Acknowledges  his  powers," 


APPENDIX  155 

and  "  Johannesburg,"  which  ends — 

"  Heil !  heil  !  hcx;h  !  heil  !  du  ubermenslich'  wohl-gebornen 
Graf  von  Chamberlein, 
WTiile  underground, 
^^^ile  underground. 

Such  rare  and  scattered  Kaffirs  as  are  found 
Repeat  the  happy,  happy,  happy,  happy,  sound." 

And  of  course  the  lyric  at  the  end — 

*'  All  in  his  train  de  luxe 
Reading  selected  books. 

Including  Conan  Doyle's  ingenious  fiction 
And  popular  quota- 
Tions,  verses  by  the  way 

For  which  he  has  a  curious  predilection, 
And  Mr.  Werther's  work 
Called  '  England  shall  not  shirk,' 

Or  '  The  Cape  to  Cairo,  Kairouan  and  Cadiz,' 
And  '  Burke,'  and  '  Who  is  \Vho,' 
And  '  Men  and  Women  '  too. 

And  '  Etiquette  for  Gentlemen  and  Ladies,'  " 
Et  cetera,  et  cetera. 

All  that  lyric  depends  entirely  for  its  effects  upon  the 
little  Venetian  air  taken  from  Sullivan,  who  himself 
took  it  from  Verdi,  who  got  it  from  a  Gondolier.  The 
words  by  themselves  have  no  beauty  whatsoever. 

Indeed,  I  think  in  the  whole  Ode  there  is  but  one 
exception  to  the  rule  I  have  laid  down,  and  that  is  at 
the  very  end,  where  they  sing  of  the  accomplished  task 
and,  in  a  fine  hyperbole,  of  the  "  Great  story  that  shall 
shake  the  affrighted  years." 

The  last  five  lines  are  such  good  music  and  such  good 
verse  that  I  cannot  dissociate  one  from  the  other  : 

"  Chorus.     And  now  returns  he,  turns,  turns  he  to  his  own — 
Trombonk.     Ah,  maddened  with  delight, 

I  welcome  him  upon  the  loud  trombone. 


156  THE  AFTERMATH 

The  Bass  Drum.     I,  in  more  subtle  wise, 

Upon  the  big  bass  drum. 
The  Tenor.     And  I  upon  the  trembling  flute,  that  shrieks 

and  languishes  and  dies. 
All  Three.     Welcome,  and  make  a  widowed  land  rejoice  : 
Welcome,  attuned  voice; — 
Sweet  eyes  !" 

It  is  a  very  fine  ending,  and  I  congratulate  Mr. 
Daniel  Witton  upon  it  most  sincerely.   .   .   . 

*  *  *  *  * 

It  reminds  one  of  the  Bacchas. 

***** 

Should  the  student  desire  to  attempt  something  of 
the  kind  for  himself,  he  cannot  do  better  than  to  invite 
a  musical  friend  and  compose  the  ode  strictly  in  con- 
junction with  him;  neither  should  write  separately  from 
the  other,  and  let  there  be  no  quarrels  or  tantrums,  but 
let  each  be  ready  to  give  way. 

I  suggest,  as  a  subject  for  this  exercise,  a  Funeral 
Ode  upon  the  same  statesman,  to  be  sung  when  occasion 
serves. 


ON  REMAINDERS  AND  PULPING 

Should  the  student  aspire  to  collect  his  journalistic 
work,  or  the  less  ephemeral  part  of  it,  into  book  form, 
he  will  do  well  to  apply  to  some  old  and  established  firm 
of  publishers,  who  will  give  him  a  reasonable  estimate 
for  its  production,  plus  the  cost  of  advertising,  ware- 
housing, wear  and  tear,  office  expenses,  etc.,  etc.,  to 
which  must  be  added  the  customary  Fee. 

The  book  so  issued  will  be  sent  to  the  Press  for  notice 


APPENDIX  157 

and  review,  and  will,  some  weeks  later,  be  either  Re- 
maindered or  Pulped.  It  is  important  to  have  a  clear 
idea  of  these  processes  which  accompany  an  author 
throughout  his  career. 

A  book  is  said  to  be  Remaindered  when  it  is  sold  to 
the  second-hand  bookseller  in  bulk;  10  per  cent,  of  the 
sums  so  received,  less  the  cost  of  cartage  to  and  fro 
from  shop  to  shop,  and  the  wages  of  the  Persuader  who 
attempts  to  sell  the  volumes,  is  then  credited  to  the 
author  in  his  account,  which  is  usually  pressed  upon 
the  completion  of  the  transaction. 

The  less  fortunate  must  be  content  with  Pulping.  In 
the  midst  of  their  chagrin  they  will  be  consoled  by  the 
thought  that  their  book  enjoys  a  kind  of  resurrection, 
and  will  reappear  beneath  some  other,  and — who  knows  ? 
— perhaps  some  nobler  form.  The  yery  paper  upon  which 
these  words  are  printed  may  once  have  formed  part  of 
a  volume  of  yerse,  or  of  Imperialist  pamphlets  subsi- 
dised by  the  South  African  Women's  League. 

A  book  is  said  to  be  Pulped  when  it  is  sold  at  so 
many  pence  the  thousand  copies  to  the  Pulpers*  for 
Pulping.  The  transformation  is  effected  as  follows  : 
First  the  covers  are  thoroughly  and  skilfully  torn  off 
the  edition  by  girls  known  as  "Scalpers"  or  "Skin- 
ners," and  the  Poems  (or  whatnot),  after  going  through 
this  first  process,  are  shot  in  batches  of  twenty-four  into 
a  trough,  which  communicates  by  an  inclined  plane  with 
open  receptacles  known  technically  as  "bins."  Hence 
the  sheets  are  taken  out  by  another  batch  of  hands  known 
as  "  feeders  " — for  it  is  their  duty  to  "  feed  "  the  mar- 

*  Messrs.   Ibbotson,  of  Fetter-lane,  and  Charlton  and  Co., 

of  St.  Anne's,  are  the  best-known  Pulpers. 


158  THE  AFTERMATH 

vellous  machine  which  is  the  centre  of  the  whole  works. 
The  Poems  (as  we  may  imagine  them  to  be)  are  next 
thrown  by  the  "  feeders,"  with  a  certain  rapid  and 
practised  gesture,  into  a  funnel-shaped  receiver,  where 
they  are  caught  by  Six  Large  Rows  of  strong  Steel 
Teeth*  known  as  the  "Jaws,"  which  are  so  arranged 
as  just  barely  to  miss  each  other ;  these  work  alternatively 
back  and  forth,  and  reduce  the  hardest  matter  to  shreds 
in  an  incredibly  short  time. 

The  shreds  so  formed  fall  on  to  a  wide  endless  band, 
which  carries  them  on  into  the  "  bowl,"  where  they  are 
converted  under  a  continual  stream  of  boiling  water,  into 
a  kind  of  loose  paste.  Lest  any  trace  of  the  original 
Poetic  (or  Prose)  composition  could  remain  to  trouble 
the  whiteness  of  the  rapidly  forming  mixture,  this  water 
contains  a  30  per  cent,  solution  of  Sardonic  Oxide,  two 
kilogrammes  of  which  will  bleach  one  thousand  kilos  of 
shredded  Poems  or  Essays  in  from  thirty-five  to  forty 
minutes.  When  the  Poems  or  whatnot  have  been  finally 
reduced  to  a  white  and  formless  mass,  they  are  termed 
-pulp  and  this  pulp  is  laid  out  into  frames,  to  be  con- 
verted once  more  into  paper.  Art,  glazed,  and  medium. 

This  principle  of  "the  Conservation  of  Paper  "  or, 
as  Lord  Balton  (Sir  Charles  Quarry)  has  himself  called 
it,  "the  Circulation  of  Literature,"  is  naturally  more 
developed  among  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  than  upon 
the  Continent.     The  patriotic  reader  will  be  pleased  to 

*  Until  Lord  Balton  (then  Sir  Charles  Quarry)  invented  this 
part  of  the  machine,  poems,  apologies  for  Christianity,  etc., 
in  fact  all  kinds  of  books,  had  to  be  torn  laboriously  into 
minute  pieces  by  hand.  It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  now-a- 
days  what  exertion  this  involved.  We  live  in  an  age  of 
machinery  ! 

i 


APPENDIX  159 

hear  that  whereas  of  existing  German  books  barely  35 
per  cent,  are  pulped  within  the  year,  of  French  books 
not  27  per  cent.,  and  of  Italian  but  15  per  cent. ;  of 
our  total  production — which  is  far  larger — no  less  than 
73  per  cent,  are  restored  to  their  original  character  of 
useful  blank  paper  within  the  year,  ready  to  receive 
further  impressions  of  Human  Genius  and  to  speed  on 
its  accelerated  round  the  progress  of  Mankind. 

Amen. 


INDEX 


Abingdon,     History     of,     by     Lord    Charles     Camber,     see 

Pulping,  p.  187. 
Action,    Combination   of,    with   Plot,    Powerful   Effect    of,  in 

Modern  Novels,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Advertisement,  FoUy  and  Waste  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Affection,    Immoderate,    for    our   own    Work,    Cure    of,    see 

Pulping,  p.  187. 
All  Souls,  College  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Amusements  of  Printers  and  Publishers,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Art,  Literary,  Ultimate  End  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Astonishment  of  Young  Poet,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Authorship,  Vanity  of  Human,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Baronets,   Family  Histories  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

Benjamin  Kidd,  see  Kidd. 

Beaune,  Wine  of,  Its  Consoling  Qualities,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Beotius,  Decline  in  Sale  of  Works  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

Bilge,  Literature  so  Termed,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Bird,  The  Honourable,  his  "  Essay  on  Popery,"  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 
Books,  see  Pulping,   p.   187. 
Bore,  Books  that,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Boston,    Effect    of,    upon    American    Culture,    see    Pulping, 

p.  187. 

Cabs,    Necessity   of,    to   Modern    Publisher,   see   Pulping,   p. 

187'. 
Cabs  to  Authors,  Unwarrantable  Luxury,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Call,  Divine,  to  a  Literary  Career,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Curse,  Publishers  a,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Curzon,  Lord,  his  Literary  Works,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 


ii  THE  AFTERMATH 

Damn,  Expletive,  When  Used,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

Damn,  Thirteen  Qualifications  of  Same,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Daniel    in    Lion's    Den    Compared    to    a    Just    Author,    see 

Pulping,  p.  187. 
Dogs,  Reputation  Going  to  the,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 
Dowagers,  Novels  Written  by,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Doyle,  Conan,  see  O'Doyle. 

Dozen,  Trade  Term  for  Thirteen,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Dreyfus,  Literature  upon,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

Education,  Futility  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 
Eighty  Club,  see  Female  Suffrage,  also  Suffrage. 
Elders,  see  Suzanna. 

England,  Source  and  Wealth  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Evil,  Origin  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  1S7. 

Fame,  see  Pulping,  p.   1S7. 

Fate,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Finesse,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Finland,  Doom  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Francis   of    Assisi,    Saint,    Modern    Books   on,    see   Pulping, 

p.  187. 
Fuss,  Folly  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Genius,  Indestructibility  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Hanging,  Suicide  by,  when  Caused  by  Failure,  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 
Heaven,  Monkish  Fables  upon,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 
Hell,  ditto,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Howl,  The  Sudden,  When  Excusable,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
*'  Huguenot,"     pseudonym,    his    "  Influence    of     Jesuits     in 

Europe/'  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

India,  Lord  Curzon's  Views  on,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Inspiration,  Sole  Source  of  Poetry,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Jesuits,  Their  Reply  to  "  Huguenot,"  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 


INDEX  iii 

Kidd,  E'enjamin,  Philosophy  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 
Kruger,  Memoirs  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Lamb,  Charles,  Centenary  Edition  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

London,  Fascination  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

"  Lunaticus,"  his  Essays  on  Foreign  Politics,  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 
Luzon,  "  How  Old  Glory  Floats  Over"  (Putnam  and  Co.,  3 

dollars),  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Machi,  Papier,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

"  Mamma,"    "  Darling    Old,"    Story    for    Children,    by    the 

Countess  of  K ,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Milner,  Lord,  Proclamations  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Moulds,  Modern  Books  Printed  from,  see  Pulping,  187. 

"  Mucker,"   "  To   Come  a,"   Publishers'  slang,  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 

Name,  Real,  of  "  Diplomaticus,"  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

O'Doyle,  Conan,  Political  Works  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Opper,  Caricatures  of  England  by,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Paper,  How  Procured,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Profits,  Half,  System  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Pulping,  p.  187. 

Queen  of  Roumania,  Verses  by,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Rhodes,  Cecil,   Numerous  Lives  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 
Rot,  Inevitable  End  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Rubbish,  Common  Fate  of,  see  Pulping,  p.   187. 

Sabatier,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Soul,  Human,  What  is  the,  by  James  Heading,  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 
Suffrage,  Female,  Arguments  For  and  Against,  by  Members 

of  the  Eighty  Club,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Suzarma  and  the  Elders,  Sacred  Poem,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 


iv  THE  AFTERMATH 

Tax,  Bread,  Repeal  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Times    Newspaper,    History    of    War    in    South    Africa,    see 

Pulping,  p.   187. 
Times,  Obituary  Notices  of.  Reprinted,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Times,  All  Republications  from,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 
Transvaal,  Truth  About,  by  Patrick  FitzPatrick,  see  Pulping, 

p.  187. 

Uganda  Railway,  Balance-sheet  of,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Vanitas,  Vanitatum,  see  Vanitatum. 
Vanitatum,  Vanitas,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 

Vindex,  his  Great  Biography  of  Cecil  Rhodes,  see  Pulping, 
p.  187. 

W.  X.  Y.  Z.,  see  Pulping,  p.  187. 


LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 


DEDICATION 


TO 

THE    REPUBLICAN    CLUB 

I     AM      DETERMINED     TO     DEDICATE     THIS 

BOOK,     AND      NOTHING      SHALL     TURN      ME 

FROM     MY    PURPOSE 


DEDICATORY  ODE 

I  MEAN  to  write  with  all  my  strength 
(It  lately  has  been  sadly  waning), 

A  ballad  of  enormous  length — 

Some  parts  of  which  will  need  explaining.* 

Because  (unlike  the  bulk  of  men, 
Who  write  for  fame  and  public  ends) 

I  turn  a  lax  and  fluent  pen 

To  talking  of  my  private  friends,  f 

For  no  one,  in  our  long  decline. 
So  dusty,  spiteful,  and  divided. 

Had  quite  such  pleasant  friends  as  mine, 
Or  loved  them  half  as  much  as  I  did. 


The  Freshman  ambles  down  the  High, 
In  love  with  everything  he  sees. 

He  notes  the  clear  October  sky, 

He  sniffs  a  vigorous  western  breeze. 

*  But  do  not  think  I  shall  explain 

To  any  great  extent.     Believe  me, 
I  partly  write  to  give  you  pain, 
And  if  you  do  not  like  me,  leave  me. 

+  And  least  of  all  can  you  cx>mplain. 
Reviewers,  whose  unholy  trade  is, 
To  puff  with  all  your  might  and  main 
Biographies  of  single  ladies. 

165 


i66  DEDICATORY  ODE 

"  Can  this  be  Oxford  ?    This  the  place  " 
(He  cries),  "  of  which  my  father  said 

The  tutoring  was  a  damned  disgrace, 
The  creed  a  mummery,  stuffed  and  dead  ? 

"  Can  it  be  here  that  Uncle  Paul 
Was  driven  by  excessive  gloom, 

To  drink  and  debt,  and,  last  of  all, 
To  smoking  opium  in  his  room  ? 

"Is  it  from  here  the  people  come, 
Who  talk  so  loud,  and  roll  their  eyes. 

And  stammer  ?     How  extremely  rum  ! 
How  curious  !     What  a  great  surprise. 

' '  Some  influence  of  a  nobler  day 

Than  theirs  (I  mean  than  Uncle  Paul's), 

Has  roused  the  sleep  of  their  decay, 

And  decked  with  light  their  ancient  walls. 

"  O  !  dear  undaunted  boys  of  old. 

Would  that  your  names  were  carven  here, 

For  all  the  world  in  stamps  of  gold. 
That  I  might  read  them  and  revere. 

' '  Who  wrought  and  handed  down  for  me 
This  Oxford  of  the  larger  air, 

Laughing,  and  full  of  faith,  and  free. 
With  youth  resplendent  everywhere." 

Then  learn  :  thou  ill-instructed,  blind. 
Young,  callow,  and  untutored  man, 

Their  private  names  were * 

Their  club  was  called  Republican. 
***** 
*  Never  mind. 


DEDICATORY  ODE  167 

Where  on  their  banks  of  light  they  lie, 
The  happy  hills  of  Heaven  between, 

The  Gods  that  rule  the  morning  sky 
Are  not  more  young,  nor  more  serene 

Than  were  the  intrepid  Four  that  stand. 
The  first  who  dared  to  live  their  dream, 

And  on  this  uncongenial  land 
To  found  the  Abbey  of  Theleme. 

We  kept  the  Rabelaisian  plan  :* 

We  dignified  the  dainty  cloisters 
With  Natural  Law,  the  Rights  of  Man, 

Song,  Stoicism,  Wine,  and  Oysters. 

The  library  was  most  inviting  : 

The  books  upon  the  crowded  shelves 

Were  mainly  of  our  private  writing  : 
We  kept  a  school  and  taught  ourselves. 

We  taught  the  art  of  writing  things 
On  men  we  still  should  like  to  throttle  : 

And  where  to  get  the  blood  of  kings 
At  only  half-a-crown  a  bottle. 
***** 

Eheu  Fugaces  !     Postume' ! 

(An  old  quotation  out  of  mode) 
My  coat  of  dreams  is  stolen  away. 

My  youth  is  passing  down  the  road. 


*  The  plan  forgot  (I  know  not  how, 
Perhaps  the  Refectory  filled  it) 
To  put  a  chapel  in  :  and  now 

We're  mortgaging  the  rest  to  build  it. 


i68  DEDICATORY  ODE 

The  wealth  of  youth,  we  spent  it  well 
And  decently,  as  very  few  can. 

And  is  it  lost  ?    I  cannot  tell ; 

And  what  is  more,  I  doubt  if  you  can. 

The  question's  very  much  too  wide, 
And  much  too  deep,  and  much  too  hollow, 

And  learned  men  on  either  side 
Use  arguments  I  cannot  follow. 

They  say  that  in  the  unchanging  place, 
Where  all  we  loved  is  always  dear. 

We  meet  our  morning  face  to  face, 

And  find  at  last  our  twentieth  year.   .   .  . 

They  say  (and  I  am  glad  they  say), 

It  is  so ;  and  it  may  be  so  : 
It  may  be  just  the  other  way, 

I  cannot  tell.     But  this  I  know  : 

From  quiet  homes  and  first  beginning, 

Out  to  the  undiscovered  ends, 
There's  nothing  worth  the  wear  of  winning. 

But  laughter  and  the  love  of  friends. 
***** 

But  something  dwindles,  oh  !  my  peers, 

And  something  cheats  the  heart  and  passes, 

And  Tom  that  meant  to  shake  the  years 
Has  come  to  merely  rattling  glasses. 

And  He,  the  Father  of  the  Flock, 
Is  keeping  Burmesans  in  order, 

An  exile  on  a  lonely  rock 

That  overlooks  the  Chinese  border. 


DEDICATORY  ODE  169 

And  One  (myself  I  mean — no  less), 

Ah  ! — will  Posterity  believe  it — 
Not  only  don't  deserve  success, 

But  hasn't  managed  to  achieve  it. 

Not  even  this  peculiar  town 

Has  ever  fixed  a  friendship  firmer, 

But — one  is  married,  one's  gone  down, 
And  one's  a  Don,  and  one's  in  Burmah. 
***** 

And  oh  !  the  days,  the  days,  the  days. 

When  all  the  four  were  off  together  : 
The  infinite  deep  of  summer  haze. 

The  roaring  boast  of  autumn  weather  ! 
***** 
I  will  not  try  the  reach  again, 

I  will  not  set  my  sail  alone, 
To  moor  a  boat  bereft  of  men 

At  Yarnton's  tiny  docks  of  stone. 

But  I  will  sit  beside  the  fire. 

And  put  my  hand  before  my  eyes. 

And  trace,  to  fill  my  heart's  desire. 
The  last  of  all  our  Odysseys. 

The  quiet  evening  kept  her  tryst : 

Beneath  an  open  sky  we  rode. 
And  mingled  with  a  wandering  mist 

Along  the  perfect  Evenlode. 

The  tender  Evenlode  that  makes 

Her  meadows  hush  to  hear  the  sound 

Of  waters  mingling  in  the  brakes, 

And  binds  my  heart  to  English  ground. 


lyo  DEDICATORY  ODE 

A  lovely  river,  all  alone, 

She  lingers  in  the  hills  and  holds 
A  hundred  little  towns  of  stone. 

Forgotten  in  the  western  wolds. 


I  dare  to  think  (though  meaner  powers 
Possess  our  thrones,  and  lesser  wits 

Are  drinking  worser  wine  than  ours. 
In  what's  no  longer  Austerlitz) 

That  surely  a  tremendous  ghost, 

The  brazen-lunged,  the  bumper-filler, 

Still  sings  to  an  immortal  toast, 
The  Misadventures  of  the  Miller. 

The  vasty  seas  are  hardly  bar 
To  men  with  such  a  prepossession ; 

We  were?    Why  then,  by  God,  we  are — 
Order  !    I  call  the  club  to  session  ! 

You  do  retain  the  song  we  set, 

And  how  it  rises,  trips,  and  scans? 

You  keep  the  sacred  memory  yet. 
Republicans  ?     Republicans  ? 

You  know  the  way  the  Avords  were  hurled, 
To  break  the  worst  of  fortune's  rub? 

I  give  the  toast  across  the  world, 

And  drink  it,  "  Gentlemen  :  the  Club." 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

DEDICATORY    ODE         ...                 -  165 

PREFACE           -                 -                 -                 -                 -  173 

I.    INTRODUCTORY  -  -  -  -177 

II.  lambkin's  NEWDIGATE           -              -              -  186 

III.  SOME    REMARKS   ON    LAMBKIN'S    PROSE   STYLE  1 92 

IV.  lambkin's    ESSAY   ON    "SUCCESS"        -                 -  1 96 
V.   LAMBKIN    ON    "  SLEEP "              -                 -                 -  202 

VI.    lambkin's    ADVICE   TO    FRESHMEN       -                 -  205 

VII.    lambkin's    LECTURE    ON    "  RIGHT "     -                 -  211 

VIII.    lambkin's    SPECIAL    CORRESPONDENCE               -  217 
IX.    lambkin's     ADDRESS     TO     THE     LEAGUE     OF 

PROGRESS    -----  226 

X.    lambkin's    LEADER     -                  -                  -                  -  233 

XL    lambkin's    REMARKS    ON    THE    END    OF    TERM  236 

Xll.    lambkin's     article     on     the      NORTH-WEST 

CORNER  OF  THE  MOSAIC  PAVEMENT  OF  THE 

ROMAN    VILLA    AT    BIGNOR                    -                 -  24I 

XIII.  lambkin's  sermon  .             -             -             .  247 

XIV.  lambkin's   open    letter    TO   CHURCHMEN     -  254 
XV.    lambkin's    letter   to    a    FRENCH    FRIEND     -  260 

XVI.    interview    with    MR.    LAMBKIN            -                  -  266 


171 


PREFACE 

The  preparation  of  the  ensuing  pages  has  been  a  labour 
of  love,  and  has  cost  me  many  an  anxious  hour.  "  Of 
the  writing  of  books,"  says  the  learned  Psalmist  (or 
more  probably  a  Syro-Chaldaeic  scribe  of  the  third 
century)  "there  is  no  end";  and  truly  it  is  a  very 
solemn  thought  that  so  many  writers,  furnishing  the 
livelihood  of  so  many  publishers,  these  in  their  turn 
supporting  so  many  journals,  reviews,  and  magazines, 
and  these  last  giving  bread  to  such  a  vast  army  of 
editors,  reviewers,  and  what  not — I  say  it  is  a  very 
solemn  thought  that  this  great  mass  of  people  should 
be  engaged  upon  labour  of  this  nature;  labour  which, 
rightly  applied,  might  be  of  immeasurable  service  to 
humanity,  but  which  is,  alas  !  so  often  diverted  into 
useless  or  even  positively  harmful  chaimels  :  channels 
upon  which  I  could  write  at  some  length,  were  it  not 
necessary  for  me,  however,  to  bring  this  reflection  to 
a  close. 

A  fine  old  Arabic  poem — probably  the  oldest  complete 
literary  work  in  the  world — (1  mean  the  Comedy  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  Book  of  Job)*  contains 

*  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  work  is  a  true  example 
of  the  early  Semitic  Comedy.  It  was  probably  sung  in  Parts 
at  the  Spring-feast,  and  would  be  acted  by  shepherds  wear- 
ing masks  and  throwing  goatskins  at  one  another,  as  they 
appear  on  the  Bas-relief  at  Ik-shumul.  See  the  article  in 
Righteousness,  by  a  gentleman  whom  the  Bible  Society  sent 
out  to  Assyria  at  their  own  expense ;  and  the  note  to  Appendix 
A  of  Benson's  Og:  King  oj  Bashan. 

173 


174  PREFACE 

hidden  away  among  its  many  treasures  the  phrase,  "Oh  ! 
that  mine  enemy  had  written  a  book  !"  This  craving 
for  literature,  which  is  so  explicable  in  a  primitive 
people,  and  the  half-savage  desire  that  the  labour  of 
writing  should  fall  upon  a  foeman  captured  in  battle, 
have  given  place  in  the  long  process  of  historical  develop- 
ment to  a  very  different  spirit.  There  is  now,  if  any- 
thing, a  superabundance  of  literature,  and  an  apology 
is  needed  for  the  appearance  of  such  a  work  as  this,  nor, 
indeed,  would  it  have  been  brought  out  had  it  not  been 
imagined  that  Lambkin's  many  friends  would  give  it  a 
ready  sale. 

Animaxander,  King  of  the  Milesians,  upon  being 
asked  by  the  Emissary  of  Atarxessus  what  was,  in 
his  opinion,  the  most  wearying  thing  in  the  world, 
replied  by  cutting  off  the  head  of  the  messenger,  thus 
outraging  the  religious  sense  of  a  time  to  which  guests 
and  heralds  were  sacred,  as  being  under  the  special 
protection  of  Zei;s  (pronounced  "  Tsephs  "). 

Warned  by  the  awful  fate  of  the  sacrilegious  monarch, 
I  will  put  a  term  to  these  opening  remarks.  My  book 
must  be  its  own  preface,  I  would  that  the  work  could 
be  also  its  own  publisher,  its  own  bookseller,  and  its 
own  reviewer. 

It  remains  to  me  only  to  thank  the  many  gentlemen 
who  have  aided  me  in  my  task  with  the  loan  of  letters, 
scraps  of  MSS.,  portraits,  and  pieces  of  clothing — in 
fine,  with  all  that  could  be  of  interest  in  illustrating 
Lambkin's  career.  My  gratitude  is  especially  due  to 
Mr.  Binder,  who  helped  in  part  of  the  writing;  to  Mr. 
Cook,  who  was  kind  enough  to  look  over  the  proofs ; 
and  to  Mr.  Wallingford,  Q.C.,  who  very  kindly  con- 


PREFACE  175 

sen  ted  to  receive  an  advance  copy.  I  must  also  thank 
the  Bishop  of  Bury  for  his  courteous  sympathy  and 
ever-ready  suggestion;  I  must  not  omit  from  this  list 
M.  Hertz,  who  has  helped  me  with  French,  and  whose 
industry  and  gentlemanly  manners  are  particularly 
pleasing. 

I  cannot  close  without  tendering  my  thanks  in  general 
to  the  printers  who  have  set  up  this  book,  to  the  agencies 
which  have  distributed  it,  and  to  the  booksellers,  who 
have  put  it  upon  their  shelves ;  I  feel  a  deep  debt  of 
gratitude  to  a  very  large  number  of  people,  and  that  is 
a  pleasant  sensation  for  a  man  who,  in  the  course  of  a 
fairly  successful  career,  has  had  to  give  (and  receive) 
more  than  one  shrewd  knock. 

The  Chaplaincy, 

BuRFOED  College, 
Oxford. 

P.S. — I  have  consulted,  in  the  course  of  this  work, 
Liddell  and  Scott's  Larger  Greek  Lexicon,  Smith's  Dic- 
tionary of  Antiquities,  Skeat's  Etymological  Dictionary, 
Le  Dictionaire  Franco- Anglais,  et  Anglo-Fra7i(^ais,  of 
Boileau,  Curtis'  English  Synonyms,  Buffle  on  Punctua- 
tion, and  many  other  authorities  which  will  be  acknow- 
ledged in  the  text. 


LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

BEING   THE   UNPUBLISHED   WORKS  OF 

J.   A.    LAMBKIN,   M.A., 

Sometime  Fellow  of  Burford  College, 


I 

INTRODUCTORY 

It  is  without  a  trace  of  compunction  or  regret  that  I 
prepare  to  edit  the  few  unpublished  essays,  sermons, 
and  speeches  of  my  late  dear  friend,  Mr.  Lambkin.  On 
the  contrary,  I  am  filled  with  a  sense  that  my  labour  is 
one  to  which  the  clearest  interests  of  the  whole  English 
people  call  me,  and  I  have  found  myself,  as  the  work 
grew  under  my  hands,  fulfilling,  if  I  may  say  so  with 
due  modesty,  a  high  and  noble  duty.  I  remember 
Lambkin  himself,  in  one  of  the  last  conversations  I 
had  with  him,  saying  with  the  acuteness  that  charac- 
terised him,  "  The  world  knows  nothing  of  its  greatest 
men."  This  pregnant  commentary  upon  human  affairs 
was,  I  admit,  produced  by  an  accident  in  the  Oxford 
Herald  which  concerned  myself.  In  a  description  of  a 
Public  Function  my  name  had  been  mis-spelt,  and 
though  I  was  deeply  wounded  and  offended,  I  was 
careful  (from  a  feeling  which  I  hope  is  common  to  all 
of  us)  to  make  no  more  than  the  slightest  reference  to 
this  insult. 

177  12 


178  LAMBKIN'S  REMAINS 

The  acute  eye  of  friendship  and  sympathy,  coupled 
with  the  instincts  of  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  per- 
ceived my  irritation,  and  in  the  evening  Lambkin 
uttered  the  memorable  words  that  I  have  quoted.  I 
thanked  him  warmly,  but,  if  long  acquaintance  had 
taught  him  my  character,  so  had  it  taught  me  his.  I 
knew  the  reticence  and  modesty  of  my  colleague,  the 
almost  morbid  fear  that  vanity  (a  vice  which  he  detested) 
might  be  imputed  to  him  on  account  of  the  exceptional 
gifts  which  he  could  not  entirely  ignore  or  hide;  and  I 
was  certain  that  the  phrase  which  he  constructed  to  heal 
my  wound  was  not  without  some  reference  to  his  own 
unmerited  obscurity. 

The  world  knows  nothing  of  its  greatest  men ! 
Josiah  Lambkin  !  from  whatever  Cypress  groves  of  the 
underworld  which  environs  us  when  on  dark  winter  even- 
ings in  the  silence  of  our  own  souls  which  nothing  can 
dissolve  though  all  attunes  to  that  which  nature  herself 
perpetually  calls  us,  always,  if  we  choose  but  to 
remember,  your  name  shall  be  known  wherever  the 
English  language  and  its  various  dialects  are  spoken. 
The  great  All -mother  has  made  me  the  humble  instru- 
ment, and  I  shall  perform  my  task  as  you  would  have 
desired  it  in  a  style  which  loses  half  its  evil  by  losing 
all  its  rhetoric;  I  shall  pursue  my  way  and  turn  neither 
to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  but  go  straight  on  in  the 
fearless  old  English  fashion  till  it  is  completed. 

Josiah  Abraham  Lambkin  was  born  of  well-to-do  and 
gentlemanly  parents  in  Bayswater*  on  January  19th, 
1843.     His  father,  at  the  time  of  his  birth,  entertained 

*  The  house  is  now  occupied  by  Mr.  Heavy,  the  well-known 
financier. 


INTRODUCTORY  179 

objections  to  the  great  Public  Schools,  largely  founded 
upon  his  religious  leanings,  which  were  at  that  time 
opposed  to  the  ritual  of  those  institutions.  In  spite 
therefore  of  the  .vehement  protestations  of  his  mother 
(who  was  distantly  connected  on  the  maternal  side  with 
the  Cromptons  of  Cheshire)  the  boy  passed  his  earlier 
years  under  the  able  tutorship  of  a  Nonconformist 
divine,  and  later  passed  into  the  academy  of  Dr. 
Whortlebury  at  Highgate.* 

Of  his  school-days  he  always  spoke  with  some  bitter- 
ness. He  appears  to  have  suffered  considerably  from 
bullying,  and  the  Headmaster,  though  a  humane,  was 
a  blunt  man,  little  fitted  to  comprehend  the  delicate 
nature  with  which  he  had  to  deal.  On  one  occasion 
the  nervous  susceptible  lad  found  it  necessary  to  lay 
before  him  a  description  of  the  treatment  to  which  he 
had  been  subjected  by  a  younger  and  smaller,  but  much 
stronger  boy ;  the  pedagogue's  only  reply  was  to  flog 
Lambkin  heartily  with  a  light  cane,  "  inflicting,"  as 
he  himself  once  told  me,  "such  exquisite  agony  as  would 
ever  linger  in  his  memory."  Doubtless  this  teacher  of 
the  old  school  thought  he  was  (to  use  a  phrase  then 
common)  "making  a  man  of  him,"  but  the  object  was 
not  easily  to  be  attained  by  brutal  means.  Let  us  be 
thankful  that  these  punishments  have  nearly  disappeared 
from  our  modern  seminaries. 

When  Josiah  was  fifteen  years  of  age,   his  father, 
having  prospered  in  business,  removed  to  Eaton  Square 

*  The  old  school  house  has  been  pulled  down  to  make  room 

for  a  set  of  villas  called  "Whortlebury  Gardens."     I  believe 

No.  35  to  be  the  exact  spot,  but  was  unable  to  determine  it 

arrurately  on  account  of  the  uncourteous  action  of  the  present 

proprietor. 


i8o  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

and  bought  an  estate  in  Surrey.  The  merchant's  mind, 
which,  though  rough,  was  strong  and  acute,  had  mean- 
while passed  tlirough  a  considerable  change  in  the  matter 
of  religion ;  and  as  the  result  of  long  but  silent  self- 
examination  he  became  the  ardent  supporter  of  a  system 
which  he  had  formerly  abhorred.  It  was  therefore 
determined  to  send  the  lad  to  one  of  the  two  great 
Universities,  and  though  Mrs.  Lambkin's  second 
cousins,  the  Crumptons,  had  all  been  to  Cambridge, 
Oxford  was  finally  decided  upon  as  presenting  the 
greater  social  opportunities  at  the  time.* 

Here,  then,  is  young  Lambkin,  in  his  nineteenth  year, 
richly  but  soberly  dressed,  and  eager  for  the  new  life 
that  opens  before  him.  He  was  entered  at  Burford 
College  on  October  the  15th,  1861 ;  a  date  which  is, 
by  a  curious  coincidence,  exactly  thirty-six  years,  four 
months,  and  two  days  from  the  time  in  which  I  pen 
these  lines. 

Of  his  undergraduate  career  there  is  little  to  be  told. 
Called  by  his  enemies  "  The  Burford  Bounder,"  or 
"  dirty  Lambkin,"  he  yet  acquired  the  respect  of  a 
small  but  choice  circle  who  called  him  by  his  own 
name.  He  was  third  froxhne  accessit  for  the  Jolinson 
prize  in  Biblical  studies,  and  would  undoubtedly  have 
obtained  (or  been  mentioned  for)  the  Newdigate,  had  he 
not  been  pitted  against  two  men  of  quite  exceptional 
poetic  gifts — the  present  editor  of  "  The  Investor's  Sure 
Prophet,"  and  Mr.  Hound,  the  well-known  writer  on 
"  Food  Statistics." 

He  took  a  good  Second-class  in  Greats  in  the  summer 
of  1864,  and  was  immediately  elected  to  a  fellowship 
*  1  am  speaking  of  1861. 


INTRODUCTORY  i8i 

at  Burford.  It  was  not  known  at  the  time  that  his 
fatlicr  had  become  a  bankrupt  through  lending  large 
sums  at  a  high  rate  of  interest  to  a  young  heir  without 
security,  trusting  to  the  necessity  under  which  his  name 
and  honour  would  put  him  to  pay.  In  the  shipwreck 
of  the  family  fortunes,  the  small  endowment  was  a 
veritable  godsend  to  Josiah,  who  but  for  this  recognition 
of  his  merits  would  have  been  compelled  to  work  for  his 
living. 

As  it  was,  his  peculiar  powers  were  set  free  to  plan 
his  great  monograph  on  "  Being,"  a  work  which,  to  the 
day  of  his  death,  he  designed  not  only  to  write  but  to 
publish. 

There  was  not,  of  course,  any  incident  of  note  in  the 
thirty  years  during  which  he  held  his  fellowship.  He 
did  his  duty  plainly  as  it  lay  before  him,  occasionally 
taking  pupils,  and  after  the  Royal  Commission,  even 
giving  lectures  in  the  College  hall.  He  was  made  Junior 
Dean  in  October,  1872,  Junior  Bursar  in  1876,  and 
Bursar  in  i88o,  an  office  which  he  held  during  the  rest 
of  his  life. 

In  this  capacity  no  breath  of  calumny  ever  touched 
him.  His  character  was  spotless.  He  never  offered  or 
took  compensations  of  any  kind,  and  no  one  has  hinted 
that  his  accounts  were  not  accurately  and  strictly  kept. 

He  never  allowed  himself  to  be  openly  a  candidate 
for  the  Wardenship  of  the  College,  but  it  is  remarkable 
that  he  received  one  vote  at  each  of  the  three  elections 
held  in  the  twenty  years  of  his  residence. 

He  passed  peacefully  away  just  after  Hall  on  the 
Gaudy  Night  of  last  year.  When  his  death  was  reported, 
an  old  scout,  ninety -two  years  of  age,  who  had  grown 


i82  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

deaf  in  the  service  of  the  College,  burst  into  tears  and 
begged  that  the  name  might  be  more  clearly  repeated  to 
him,  as  he  had  failed  to  catch  it.  On  hearing  it  he 
dried  his  eyes,  and  said  he  had  never  known  a  better 
master. 

His  character  will,  I  think,  be  sufficiently  evident  in 
the  writings  which  I  shall  publish.  He  was  one  of 
nature's  gentlemen;  reticent,  just,  and  full  of  self- 
respect.  He  hated  a  scene,  and  was  careful  to  avoid 
giving  rise  even  to  an  argument.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
was  most  tenacious  of  his  just  rights,  though  charitable 
to  the  deserving  poor,  and  left  a  fortune  of  thirty-five 
thousand  pounds. 

In  the  difficult  questions  which  arise  from  the  superior 
rank  of  inferiors  he  displayed  a  constant  tact  and  judg- 
ment. It  is  not  always  easy  for  a  tutor  to  control  and 
guide  the  younger  members  of  the  aristocracy  without 
being  accused  of  pitiless  severity  on  the  one  hand  or  of 
gross  obsequiousness  on  the  other.  Lambkin,  to  his 
honour,  contrived  to  direct  with  energy  and  guide  with- 
out offence  the  men  upon  whom  England's  greatness 
depends. 

He  was  by  no  means  a  snob — ^snobbishness  was  not  in 
him.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  equally  removed  from 
what  is  almost  worse  than  snobbishness — the  morbid 
terror  of  subservience  which  possesses  some  ill-balanced 
minds. 

His  attitude  was  this  :  that  we  are  compelled  to  admit 
the  aristocratic  quality  of  the  English  polity  and  should, 
while  decently  veiling  its  cruder  aspects,  enjoy  to  the 
full  the  benefits  which  such  a  constitution  confers  upon 
society  and  upon  our  individual  selves. 


INTRODUCTORY  183 

By  a  genial  observance  of  such  canons  he  became  one 
of  the  most  respected  among  those  whom  the  chances  of 
an  academic  career  presented  to  him  as  pupils  or  parents. 
He  was  the  guest  and  honoured  friend  of  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland,  the  Duke  of  Pembroke,  the  Duke  of 
Limerick  ("Mad  Harry"),  and  the  Duke  of  Lincoln; 
he  had  also  the  honour  of  holding  a  long  conversation 
with  the  Duke  of  Berkshire,  whom  he  met  upon  the  top 
of  an  omnibus  in  Piccadilly  and  instantly  recognised. 
He  possessed  letters,  receipts  or  communications  from 
no  less  than  four  Marquises,  one  Marquess,  ten  Barons, 
sixteen  Baronets,  and  one  hundred  and  twenty  County 
Gentlemen.  I  must  not  omit  Lord  Grumbletooth,  who 
had  had  commercial  dealings  with  his  father,  and  who 
remained  to  the  end  of  his  life  a  cordial  and  devoted 
friend.* 

His  tact  in  casual  conversation  was  no  less  remark- 
able than  his  general  savoir  faire  in  the  continuous 
business  of  life.  Thus  upon  one  occasion  a  royal 
personage  happened  to  be  dining  in  Hall.  It  was 
some  days  after  the  death  of  Mr.  Hooligan,  the  well- 
known  Home  Rule  leader.  The  distinguished  guest, 
with  perhaps  a  trifle  of  licence,  turned  to  Lambkin 
and  said,  "  Well,  Mr.  Bursar,  what  do  you  think  of 
Hooligan?"  We  observed  a  respectful  silence  and 
wondered  what  reply  Lambkin  would  give  in  these 
difficult  circumstances.  The  answer  was  like  a  bolt 
from  the  blue,  "  De  mortuis  nil  nisi  bonum,"  said  the 
Classical  Scholar,  and  a  murmur  of  applause  went 
round  the  table. 

*  Mr.  Lambkin  has  assured  me  that  his  lordship  had  main- 
tained these  relations  to  the  day  of  his  death. 


i84  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

Indeed  his  political  views  were  perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  feature  in  a  remarkable  character.  He 
died  a  convinced  and  staunch  Liberal  Unionist,  and  this 
was  the  more  striking  as  he  was  believed  by  all  his 
friends  to  be  a  conservative  until  the  introduction  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  famous  Bill  in  1885. 

In  the  delicate  matter  of  religious  controversy  his  own 
writings  must  describe  him,  nor  will  I  touch  here  upon 
a  question  which  did  not  rise  to  any  considerable  public 
importance  until  after  his  death.  Perhaps  I  may  be 
permitted  to  say  this  much;  he  was  a  sincere  Christian 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  attached  to  no  narrow 
formularies,  but  following  as  closely  as  he  could  the 
system  of  Seneca,  stiffened  (as  it  were)  with  the  medita- 
tions of  Marcus  Aurelius,  though  he  was  never  so  violent 
as  to  attempt  a  practice  of  what  that  extreme  stoic  laid 
down  in  theory. 

Neither  a  ritualist  nor  a  low-churchman,  he  expressed 
his  attitude  by  a  profound  and  suggestive  silence.  These 
words  only  escaped  him  upon  one  single  occasion.  Let 
us  meditate  upon  them  well  in  the  stormy  discussions  of 
to-day  :  "  Medio  tutissimus  ibis." 

His  learning  and  scholarship,  so  profound  in  the 
dead  languages,  was  exercised  with  singular  skill  and 
taste  in  the  choice  he  made  of  modern  authors. 

He  was  ignorant  of  Italian,  but  thoroughly  conversant 
with  the  French  classics,  which  he  read  in  the  admirable 
translations  of  the  ' '  Half-crown  Series. ' '  His  principal 
reading  here  was  in  the  works  of  Voltaire,  wherein, 
however,  he  confessed,  "  He  could  find  no  style,  and 
little  more  than  blasphemous  ribaldry."  Indeed,  of  the 
European  languages  he  would  read  German  with  the 


INTRODUCTORY  185 

greatest  pleasure,  confining  himself  chiefly  to  the  writ- 
ings of  Lessing,  Kant,  and  Schiller.  His  mind  acquired 
by  this  habit  a  singular  breadth  and  fecundity,  his  style 
a  kind  of  rich  confusion,  and  his  speech  (for  he  was 
able  to  converse  a  little  in  that  idiom)  was  strengthened 
by  expressions  of  the  deepest  philosophic  import;  a 
habit  which  gave  him  a  peculiar  and  individual  power 
over  his  pupils,  who  mistook  the  teutonic  gutturals  for 
violent  objurgations. 

Such  was  the  man,  such  the  gentleman,  the  true 
"  Hglaford,"  the  modern  "  Godgebidden  Eorldeman- 
thingancanning,"  whose  inner  thoughts  shall  unroll 
themselves  in  the  pages  that  follow. 


II 

LAMBKIN'S  NEWDIGATE 

POEM  WRITTEN  FOR   "  NEWDIGATE  PRIZE  "   IN 
ENGLISH  VERSE 

By  J.  A.  Lambkin,  Esq.,  of  BurJ^ord  College 

N.B. —  {The  coynfetitors  are  confined  to  the  use  of  Rhymed 
Heroic  Iambic  Pentameters,  but  the  introduction  of  Lyrics  is 
'permitted']. 

Subject:  "The  Benefits  Conferred  by  Science, 

especially  in  connection  with  the  electric 

Light 

For  the  benefit  of  those  who  do  not  care  to  read  through  the 
Poetn  but  desire  to  know  its  contents,  I  append  the  follow- 
ing headitigs: 

Invocation  to  the  Muse 
Hail  !  Happy  Muse,  and  touch  the  tuneful  string  ! 
The  benefits  conferred  by  Science*  I  sing. 

His  Theme  :  the  Electric  Light  and  its  Benefits 
Under  the  kind  Examiners'  f  direction 
I  only  write  about  them  in  connection 
With  benefits  which  the  Electric  Light 
Confers  on  us;  especially  at  night. 

*  To  be  pronounced  as  a  monosyllable  in  the  American 
fashion. 

t  Mr.  Punt,  Mr.  Howl,  and  Mr.  Grewcock  (now,  alas  ! 
deceased). 

i86 


LAMBKIN'S  NEWDIGATE  187 

These  are  my  theme,  of  these  my  song  shall  rise. 
My  lofty  head  shall  swell  to  strike  the  skies,* 
And  tears  of  hopeless  love  bedew  the  maiden's  eyes. 

Second  Invocation  to  the  Muse 
Descend,  O  Muse,  from  thy  divine  abode, 

OSNEY 

To  Osney,  "on  the  Seven  Bridges  Road ; 

For  under  Osney 's  solitary  shade 

The  bulk  of  the  Electric  Light  is  made. 

Here  are  the  works,  from  hence  the  current  flows 

Which  (so  the  Company's  prospectus  goes) 

Power  of  Works  there 

Can  furnish  to  Subscribers  hour  by  hour 
No  less  than  sixteen  thousand  candle  power,  f 
All  at  a  thousand  volts.     (It  is  essential 
To  keep  the  current  at  this  high  potential 
In  spite  of  the  considerable  expense.) 

Statistics  concerning  Them 

The  Energy  developed  represents. 
Expressed  in  foot-tons,  the  united  forces 
Of  fifteen  elephants  and  forty  horses. 
But  shall  my  scientific  detail  thus 
Clip  the  dear  wings  of  Buoyant  Pegasus  ? 

*   A  neat  rendering  of  "  Sublimi  feriam  sidera  vertice." 
t  To  the  Examiners. — These  facts  (of  which  I  guarantee  the 
accuracy)  were  given  me  by  a  Director. 


i88  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

Poetical  or  Rhetorical  Questions 
Shall  pure  statistics  jar  upon  the  ear 
That  pants  for  Lyric  accents  loud  and  clear  ? 
Shall  I  describe  the  complex  Dynamo 
Or  write  about  its  commutator  ?    No  ! 

The  Theme  changes 
To  happier  fields  I  lead  my  wanton  pen, 
The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  men. 

Third  Invocation  to  the  Muse 
Awake,  my  Muse  !     Portray  the  pleasing  sight 
That  meets  us  where  they  make  Electric  Light. 

A  Picture  of  the  Electrician 
Behold  the  Electrician  where  he  stands  : 
Soot,  oil,  and  verdigris  are  on  his  hands ; 
Large  spots  of  grease  defile  his  dirty  clothes. 
The  while  his  conversation  drips  with  oaths. 
Shall  such  a  being  perish  in  its  youth? 
Alas  !  it  is  indeed  the  fatal  truth. 
In  that  dull  brain,  beneath  that  hair  unkempt, 
Familiarity  has  bred  contempt. 
We  warn  him  of  the  gesture  all  too  late ; 
Oh,  Heartless  Jove  !    Oh,  Adamantine  Fate  ! 

His  Awful  Fate 
Some  random  Touch — a  hand's  imprudent  slip- 
The  Terminals — a  flash — a  sound  like  "  Zip  !" 
A  smell  of  burning  fills  the  startled  Air — 
The  Electrician  is  no  longer  there  ! 

***** 


LAMBKIN'S  NEWDIGATE  189 

He  changes  his  Theme 

But  let  us  turn  with  true  Artistic  scorn 
From  facts  funereal  and  from  views  forlorn 
Of  Erebus  and  Blackest  midnight  born.* 

Fourth  Invocation  to  the  Muse 

Arouse  thee,  Muse  !  and  chaunt  in  accents  rich 

The  interesting  processes  by  which 

The  Electricity  is  passed  along  : 

These  are  my  theme,  to  these  I  bend  my  song. 

Description  of  Method  by  which  the  Current 

IS  USED 

It  runs  encased  in  wood  or  porous  brick 

Through  copper  wires  two  millimetres  thick, 

And  insulated  on  their  dangerous  mission 

By  indiarubber,  silk,  or  composition, 

Here  you  may  put  with  critical  felicity 

The  following  question  :  "  What  is  Electricity?" 

Difficulty  of  determining  Nature  of  Electricity 

"Molecular  Activity,"  say  some, 

Others  when  asked  say  nothing,  and  are  dumb. 

Whatever  be  its  nature  :  this  is  clear, 

The  rapid  current  checked  in  its  career. 

Baulked  in  its  race  and  halted  in  its  course! 

Transforms  to  heat  and  light  its  latent  force  : 

*  A  reminiscence  of  Milton  :  "  Fas  est  et  ab  hoste  doccri." 
■f  Lambkin  told  nie  he  regretted  this  line,  which  was  for  the 

sake  of  Rhyme.     He  would  willingly  have  replaced  it,  but  to 

his  last  day  could  construct  no  substitute, 


I90  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

Conservation  of  Energy.     Proofs  of  this  : 
NO  Experiment  needed 
It  needs  no  pedant  in  the  lecturer's  chair 
To  prove  that  light  and  heat  are  present  there. 
The  pear-shaped  vacuum  globe,  I  understand, 
Is  far  too  hot  to  fondle  with  the  hand, 
While,  as  is  patent  to  the  meanest  sight. 
The  carbon  filament  is  very  bright. 

Doubts  on  the  Municipal  System,  but — 
As  for  the  lights  they  hang  about  the  town. 
Some  praise  them  highly,  others  run  them  down. 
This  system  (technically  called  the  arc) 
Makes  some  passages  too  light,  others  too  dark. 

None  on  the  Domestic 
But  in  the  house  the  soft  and  constant  rays 
Have  always  met  with  universal  praise. 

Its  Advantages 
For  instance  :  if  you  want  to  read  in  bed 
No  candle  burns  beside  your  curtains'  head. 
Far  from  some  distant  corner  of  the  room 
The  incandescent  lamp  dispels  the  gloom. 

Advantages  of  Large  Print 

And  with  the  largest  print  need  hardly  try 
The  powers  of  any  young  and  vigorous  eye. 

Fifth  Invocation  to  the  Muse 
Aroint  thee,  Muse  !  inspired  the  poet  sings  ! 
1  cannot  help  observing  future  things  ! 


LAMBKIN'S  NEWDIGATE  191 

The  only  Hope  of  Humanity  is  in  Science 
Life  is  a  vale,  its  paths  are  dark  and  rough 
Only  because  we  do  not  know  enough. 
When  Science  has  discovered  something  more 
We  shall  be  happier  than  we  were  before. 

Peroration  in  the  Spirit  of  the  Rest  of 
THE  Poem 

Hail  !  Britain,  mistress  of  the  Azure  Main, 
Ten  Thousand  Fleets  sweep  over  thee  in  vain  ! 
Hail  !  mighty  mother  of  the  brave  and  free, 
That  beat  Napoleon,  and  gave  birth  to  me  ! 
Thou  that  canst  wrap  in  thine  emblazoned  robe 
One  quarter  of  the  habitable  globe. 
Thy  mountains,  wafted  by  a  favouring  breeze. 
Like  mighty  hills  withstand  the  stormy  seas. 

Warning  to  Britain 
Thou  art  a  Christian  Commonwealth.    And  yet 
Be  thou  not  all  unthankful — nor  forget 
As  thou  exultest  in  Imperial  might 
The  benefits  of  the  Electric  Light. 


Ill 

SOME  REMARKS  ON  LAMBKIN'S 
PROSE  STYLE 

No  achievement  of  my  dear  friend's  produced  a  greater 
effect  than  the  English  Essay  which  he  presented  at  his 
examination.  That  so  young  a  man,  and  a  man  trained 
in  such  an  environment  as  his,  should  have  written  an 
essay  at  all  was  sufficiently  remarkable,  but  that  his 
work  should  have  shown  such  mastery  in  the  handling, 
such  delicate  balance  of  idea,  and  so  much  know-ledge 
(in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word),  coupled  with  such  an 
astounding  insight  into  human  character  and  contem- 
porary psychology,  was  enough  to  warrant  the  remark 
of  the  then  Warden  of  Burford  :  "If  these  things" 
(said  the  aged  but  eminent  divine),  "  if  these  things  " 
(it  was  said  in  all  reverence  and  with  a  full  sense  of 
the  responsibility  of  his  position),  "  If  these  things  are 
done  in  the  green  wood,  what  will  be  done  in  the  dry?"  > 

Truly  it  may  be  said  that  the  Green  Wood  of 
Lambkin's  early  years  as  an  Undergraduate  was 
worthily  followed  by  the  Dry  Wood  of  his  later  life 
as  a  fellow  and  even  tutor,  nay,  as  a  Bursar  of  his 
college. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  add  much  to  the  reader's  own 
impressions  of  this  tour  de  force,  or  to  insist  too  strongly 
upon  the  skill  and  breadth  of  treatment  which  will  at 

192 


LAMBKIN'S   PROSE   STYLE  193 

once  make  their  mark  upon  any  intelligent  man,  and 
even  upon  the  great  mass  of  the  public.  But  I  may  be 
forgiven  if  I  give  some  slight  personal  memories  in 
interpretation  of  a  work  which  is  iiecessarily  presented 
in  the  cold  medium  of  type. 

Lambkin's  hand-writing  was  flowing  and  determined, 
but  was  often  difficult  to  read,  a  quality  which  led  in  the 
later  years  of  his  life  to  the  famous  retort  made  by 
the  Rural  Dean  of  Henchthorp  to  the  Chaplain  of 
Bower's  Hall.*  His  manuscript  was,  like  Lord  Byron's 
(and  unlike  the  famous  Codex  V  in  the  Vatican),  re- 
markable for  its  erasures,  of  which  as  many  as  three 
may  be  seen  in  some  places  super-imposed,  ladder-wise, 
en  echelle,  the  one  above  the  other,  perpendicularly  to 
the  line  of  writing. 

This  excessive  fastidiousness  in  the  use  of  words  was 
the  cause  of  his  comparatively  small  production  of 
written  work ;  and  thus  the  essay  printed  below  was 
the  labour  of  nearly  three  hours.  His  ideas  in  this 
matter  were  best  represented  by  his  little  epigram  on 
the  appearance  of  Liddell  and  Scott's  larger  Greek 
Lexicon.  "  Quality  not  quantity  "  was  the  witty  phrase 
which  he  was  heard  to  mutter  when  he  received  his  first 
copy  of  that  work. 

The  nervous  strain  of  so  much  anxiety  about  his 
literary  work  wearied  both  mind  and  body,  but  he  had 
his  reward.  The  scholarly  aptitude  of  every  particle  in 
the  phrase,  and  the  curious  symmetry  apparent  in  the 
great  whole  of  the  essay  are  due  to  a  quality  which  he 
pushed  indeed  to  excess,  but  never  beyond  the  boundary 

*  The  anecdote  will  be  found  in  my  Fifty  Years  of  Chance 
Acquaintances.     (Isaacs  and  Co.,  44s.  net.) 

13 


194  I-AiMBKI\'S   REMAINS 

that  separates  Right  and  Wrong ;  we  admire  in  the 
product  what  we  might  criticise  in  the  method,  and 
when  we  judge  as  critics  we  are  compelled  as  English- 
men and  connoisseurs  to  congratulate  and  to  applaud. 

He  agreed  with  Aristotle  in  regarding  lucidity  as  the 
main  virtue  of  style.  And  if  he  sometimes  failed  to 
attain  his  ideal  in  this  matter,  the  obscurity  was  due  to 
none  of  those  mannerisms  which  are  so  deplorable  in  a 
Meredith  or  a  Browning,  but  rather  to  the  fact  that  he 
found  great  difficulty  in  ending  a  sentence  as  he  had 
begun  it.  His  mind  outran  his  pen ;  and  the  sentence 
from  his  University  .sermon,  "  England  must  do  her 
duty,  or  what  will  the  harvest  be?"  stirring  and  patriotic 
as  it  is,  certainly  suffers  from  some  such  fault,  though  I 
cannot  quite  see  where. 

The  Oxymoron,  the  Aposiopesis,  the  Nominativus 
Pendens,  the  Anacoluthon  and  the  Zeugma  he  looked 
upon  with  abhorrence  and  even  with  dread.  He  was  a 
friend  to  all  virile  enthusiasm  in  writing  but  a  foe  to 
rhetoric,  which  (he  would  say)  "is  cloying  even  in  a 
demagogue,  and  actually  nauseating  in  the  literary 
man."  He  drew  a  distinction  between  eloquence  and 
rhetoric,  often  praising  the  one  and  denouncing  the 
other  with  the  most  abandoned  fervour  :  indeed,  it  was 
his  favourite  diversion  in  critical  conversation  accurately 
to  determine  the  meaning  of  words.  In  early  youth  he 
would  often  split  an  infinitive  or  end  a  sentence  with  a 
preposition.  But,  ever  humble  and  ready  to  learn,  he 
determined,  after  reading  Mrs.  Griffin's  well-known 
essays  in  the  Daily  American,  to  eschew  such  conduct 
for  the  future ;  and  it  was  a  most  touching  sight  to 
watch  him,  even  in  extreme  old  age,  his  reverend  white 


LAMBKIN'S  PROSE   STYLE  195 

locks  sweeping  the  paper  before  him  and  his  weak  eyes 
peering  close  at  the  MSS.  as  he  carefully  went  over  his 
phrases  with  a  pen,  scratching  out  and  amending,  at  the 
end  of  his  day's  work,  the  errors  of  this  nature. 

He  commonly  used  a  gilt  "  J  "  nib,  mounted  upon  a 
holder  of  imitation  ivory,  but  he  was  not  cramped  by  any 
petty  limitations  in  such  details  and  would,  if  necessity 
arose,  make  use  of  a  quill,  or  even  of  a  fountain  pen, 
insisting,  however,  if  he  was  to  use  the  latter,  that  it 
should  be  of  the  best. 

The  paper  upon  which  he  wrote  the  work  that  remains 
to  us  was  the  ordinary  ruled  foolscap  of  commerce ;  but 
this  again  he  regarded  as  quite  unimportant.  It  was 
the  matter  of  what  he  wrote  that  concerned  him,  not  (as 
is  so  often  the  case  with  lesser  men)  the  mere  accidents 
of  pen  or  paper. 

I  remember  little  else  of  moment  with  regard  to  his 
way  of  writing,  but  I  make  no  doubt  that  these  details 
will  not  be  without  their  interest ;  for  the  personal  habits 
of  a  great  man  have  a  charm  of  their  own.  I  read  once 
that  the  sum  of  fifty  pounds  was  paid  for  the  pen  of 
Charles  Dickens.  I  wonder  what  would  be  offered  for 
a  similar  sacred  relic,  of  a  man  more  obscure,  but  in- 
directly of  far  greater  influence;  a  relic  which  I  keep 
by  me  with  the  greatest  reverence,  which  I  do  not  use 
myself,  however  much  at  a  loss  I  may  be  for  pen  or 
pencil,  and  with  which  I  never,  upon  any  account,  allow 
the  children  to  play. 

But  I  must  draw  to  a  close,  or  I  should  merit  the 
reproach  of  lapsing  into  a  sentimental  peroration,  and 
be  told  that  I  am  myself  indulging  in  that  rhetoric  which 
Lambkin  so  severely  condemned. 


IV 
LAMBKIN'S  ESSAY  ON  "SUCCESS" 

On  "  Success  "  :  its  Causes  and  Results 

Diificidty  of  Subject. — In  approaching  a  problem  of 
this  nature,  with  all  its  anomalies  and  analogues,  we  are 
at  once  struck  by  the  difficulty  of  conditioning  any 
accurate  estimate  of  the  factors  of  the  solution  of  the 
difficulty  which  is  latent  in  the  very  terms  of  the  above 
question.  We  shall  do  well,  perhaps,  however,  to  clearly 
differentiate  from  its  fellows  the  proposition  we  have  to 
deal  with,  and  similarly  as  an  inception  of  our  analysis 
to  permanently  fix  the  definitions  and  terms  we  shall  be 
talking  of,  with,  and  by. 

Definition  of  Success. — Success  may  be  defined  as  the 
Successful  Consummation  of  an  Attempt  or  more  shortly 
as  the  Realisation  of  an  imagijted  Good,  and  as  it  im- 
plies Desire  or  the  Wish  for  a  thing,  and  at  the  same 
time  action  or  the  attempt  to  get  at  a  thing,*  we  might 
look  at  Success  from  yet  another  point  of  view  and  say 
that  Success  is  the  realisation  of  Desire  through  action. 
Indeed  this  last  definition  seems  on  the  whole  to  be  the 
best ;  but  it  is  evident  that  in  this,  as  in  all  other  matters, 

*  Lambkin  resolutely  refused  to  define  Happiness  when 
pressed  to  do  so  by  a  pupil  in  June,  1881  :  in  fact,  his  hatred 
of  definitions  was  so  well  known  as  to  earn  him  the  good- 
humoured  nick-name  of  "  the  Sloucher  "  among  the  wilder 
young  scholars. 

196 


LAMBKIN'S   ESSAY   ON    "SUCCESS"       197 

It  16  unpossible  to  arrive  at  perfection,  and  our  safest 
definition  will  be  that  which  is  found  to  be  on  the  whole 
most  approximately  the  average  mean*  of  many  hun- 
dreds that  might  be  virtually  constructed  to  more  or  less 
accurately  express  the  idea  we  have  undertaken  to  do. 

So  far  then  it  is  evident  that  while  we  may  have  a 
fairly  definite  subjective  visual  concept  of  what  Success 
is,  we  shall  never  be  able  to  convey  to  others  in  so  many 
words  exactly  what  our  idea  may  be. 

"  What  am  I  ? 

An  infant  crying  for  the  light 
That  has  no  language  but  a  cry." 

Method  of  dealing  with  Problem. — It  is,  however,  of 
more  practical  importance  nevertheless,  to  arrive  at  some 
method  or  other  by  Avhich  we  can  in  the  long  run  attack 
the  very  serious  problem  presented  to  us.  Our  best 
chance  of  arriving  at  any  solution  will  lie  in  attempting 
to  give  objective  form  to  what  it  is  we  have  to  do  with. 
For  this  purpose  we  will  first  of  all  divide  all  actions 
into  (J«j)  Successful  and  (1)  Non-successful t  actions. 
These  two  categories  are  at  once  mutually  exclusive  and 
collectively  universal.  Nothing  of  which  Success  caii 
be  truly  predicated,  can  at  the  same  time  be  called  with 
any  approach  to  accuracy  Unsuccessful ;  and  similarly 
if  an  action  finally  result  in  Non-success,  it  is  quite 
evident  that  to  speak  of  its  "Success"  would  be  to 
trifle  with  words  and  to  throw  dust  into  our  own  eyes, 

*  rh  fj-fffov. 

t  This  was  the  first  historical  example  of  Lambkin's 
acquaintance  with  Hebrew  —  a  knowledge  which  he  later 
turned  to  such  great  account  in  his  attack  on  the  pseudo- 
Johannes. 


198  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

which  is  a  fatal  error  in  any  case.  We  have  then  these 
two  primary  categories  :  what  is  true  of  one  will,  with 
certain  reservations,  be  untrue  of  the  other,  in  most 
cases  (we  will  come  to  that  later)  and  vice-versd. 

(i)  Success. 
(2)  Non-success. 

First  great  Di-fficuliy. — But  here  we  are  met  at  the 
outset  of  our  examination  by  a  difficulty  of  enormous 
dimensions.  There  is  not  one  success ;  there  are  many. 
There  is  the  success  of  the  Philosopher,  of  the  Scientist, 
of  the  Politician,  of  the  Argument,  of  the  Commanding 
Officer,  of  the  Divine,  of  the  mere  unthinking  Animal 
appetite,  and  of  others  more  numerous  still.  It  is 
evident  that  with  such  a  vast  number  of  different  sub- 
sidiary categories  within  our  main  category  it  would  be 
impossible  to  arrive  at  any  absolute  conclusions,  or  to 
lay  down  any  firm  general  principle.  For  the  moment 
we  had  erected  some  such  fundamental  foundation  the 
fair  structure  would  be  blown  to  a  thousand  atoms  by 
the  consideration  of  some  fresh  form,  aspect,  or  realisa- 
tion, of  Success  which  might  have  escaped  our  vision, 
so  that  where  should  we  be  then  ?  It  is  therefore  most 
eminently  a  problem  in  which  we  should  beware  of  undue 
generalisations  and  hasty  dogmatism.  We  must  abandon 
here  as  everywhere  the  immoral  and  exploded  cant  of 
mediaeval  deductive  methods  invented  by  priests  and 
mummers  to  enslave  the  human  mind,  and  confine  our- 
selves to  what  we  absolutely  know.  Shall  we  towards 
the  end  of  this  essay  truly  know  anything  with  regard  to 
Success  ?  Who  can  tell  !  But  at  least  let  us  not  cheat 
ourselves   with   the   axioms,    affirmations,    and    dogmas 


LAMBKIN'S  ESSAY   ON    "SUCCESS"       199 

which  are,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  ruin  of  so  many ;  let 
us,  if  I  may  use  a  metaphor,  "abandon  the  a  priori  for 
the  chiaroscuro.'^ 

Second  much  greater  Dificuliy. — But  if  the  problem 
is  complex  from  the  great  variety  of  the  various  kinds  of 
Success,  vi'hat  shall  we  say  of  the  disturbance  introduced 
by  a  new  aspect  of  the  matter,  which  we  are  now  about 
to  allude  to  !  Aye  !  What  indeed  !  An  aspect  so 
widespread  in  its  consequences,  so  momentous  and  so 
fraught  with  menace  to  all  philosophy,  so  big  with 
portent,  and  of  such  threatening  aspect  to  humanity 
itself,  that  we  hesitate  even  to  bring  it  forward  !* 
Success  is  not  always  Success:  Non-success  {or  Failure) 
is  an  aspect  of  Success,  and  vice-versa.  This  apparent 
paradox  will  be  seen  to  be  true  on  a  little  consideration. 
For  "  Success  "  in  any  one  case  involves  the  "  Failure  " 
or  "  Non-success  "  of  its  opposite  or  correlative.  Thus, 
if  we  bet  ten  pounds  with  one  of  our  friends  our 
"Success"  would  be  his  "Non-success,"  and  vice- 
versa,  collaterally.  Again,  if  we  desire  to  fail  in  a 
matter  {e.g.,  any  man  would  hope  to  fail  in  being 
hanged t),  then  to  succeed  is  to  fail,  and  to  fail  is  to 
succeed,  and  our  successful  failure  would  fail  were  we 
to  happen  upon  a  disastrous  success  !  And  note  that 
the  very  same  act,  not  this,  that,  or  another,  but  the 
VERY  SAME,  is  (according  to  the  way  we  look  at  it)  a 
"successful"    or    an    "unsuccessful"    act.      Success 

*  It  is  the  passage  that  follows  which  made  so  startling  an 
impression  on  the  examiners.  At  that  time  young  Lambkin 
was  almost  alone  in  holding  the  views  which  have  since, 
through  the  Fellows  of  Colleges  who  may  be  newspaper  men 
or  colonial  governors,  influenced  the  whole  world. 

t  Jocular. 


200  LAMJJRIN'S    REMAINS 

tlu'icluic  not  only  )iiay  be,  but  viusL  be  i' ailuie,  and 
the  two  categories  upon  which  we  had  built  such  high 
hopes  have  disappeared  for  ever  ! 

Solemn  Considerations  consequent  upon  this. — Terrible 
thought  !  A  thing  can  be  at  once  itself  and  not  itself — 
nay  its  own  opposite  !  The  mind  reels,  and  the  frail 
human  vision  peering  over  the  immense  gulf  of  meta- 
physical infinity  is  lost  in  a  cry  for  mercy  and  trembles 
on  the  threshold  of  the  unseen  !  What  visions  of  horror 
and  madness  may  not  be  reserved  for  the  too  daring  soul 
which  has  presumed  to  knock  at  the  Doors  of  Silence  ! 
Let  us  learn  from  the  incomprehensible  how  small  and 
weak  a  thing  is  man  ! 

A  more  Cheerful  View. — But  it  would  ill-befit  the 
philosopher  to  abandon  his  effort  because  of  a  kind  of  a 
check  or  two  at  the  start.  The  great  hand  of  Time 
shouts  ever  "  onward  "  ;  and  even  if  we  cannot  discover 
the  Absolute  in  the  limits  of  this  essay,  we  may  rise 
from  the  ashes  of  our  tears  to  better  and  happier  things. 

Hie  Beginning  of  a  Solution. — A  light  seems  to  dawn 
on  us.  We  shall  not  arrive  at  the  full  day  but  we  shall 
see  "  in  a  glass  darkly"  what,  in  the  final  end  of  our 
development,  may  perhaps  be  more  clearly  revealed  to 
us.  It  is  evident  that  we  have  been  dealing  with  a 
relative.  How  things  so  apparently  aljsolute  as  hanging 
or  betting  can  be  in  any  true  sense  relative  we  cannot 
tell,  because  we  cannot  conceive  the  majestic  whole  of 
which  Success  and  Failure,  plus  and  minus,  up  and 
down,  yes  and  no,  truth  and  lies,  are  but  as  the  glitter- 
ing facets  of  a  diamond  borne  upon  the  finger  of  some 
titled  and  wealthy  person. 

Our    error    came    from    foolish    self-sufficiency    and 


LAMBKIX'S   ESSAY   ON    "SUCCESS"      201 

pride.  We  thought  (forsooth)  that  our  mere  human 
conceptions  of  contradiction  were  reah  It  has  been 
granted  to  us  (though  we  are  but  human  still)  to  discover 
our  error — there  is  no  hot  or  cold,  no  light  or  dark,  and 
no  good  or  evil,  all  are,  in  a  certain  sense,  and  with 
certain  limitations  (if  I  may  so  express  myself)  the 
Aspects 

A.t  this  foint  the  hell  rang  and  the  papers  had  to  he 
delivered  up.  Lamhkin  could  not  let  his  work  go, 
however,  without  adding  a  few  words  to  show  what  he 
might  have  done  had  time  allowed.     He  wrote : 

"  No  Time.  Had  intended  examples — Success, 
Academic,  Acrobatic,  Agricultural,  Aristocratic,  Bacillic 
.  .  .  Yaroslavic,  Zenobidic,  etc.  Historical  cases 
examined,  Biggar's  view,  H.  Unity,  Univ.  Conscious- 
ness, Amphodunissa,*  Setxm  ^^---...'■^^ ." 

*  The  MS.  is  here  ahnost  illegible. 


LAMBKIN  ON  "SLEEP" 

[This  little  gem  was  written  for  the  great  Monograph  on 
"  Being  "  which  Lambkin  never  lived  to  complete.  It  was 
included,  however,  in  his  little  volume  of  essays  entitled 
"  Rictus  Almae  Matris.'^  The  careful  footnotes,  the  fund  of 
information,  and  the  scholarly  accuracy  of  the  whole  sketch 
are  an  example — [alas!  the  only  one) — of  what  his  full  work 
would  have  been  had  he  brought  it  to  a  conclusion.  It  is  an 
admirable  example  of  his  manner  in  maturer  years.] 

In  Sleep  our  faculties  lie  dormant.*  We  perceive 
nothing  or  almost  nothing  of  our  surroundings ;  and 
the  deeper  our  slumber  the  more  absolute  is  the  barrier 
between  ourselves  and  the  outer  world.  The  causes  of 
this  "Cessation  of  Consciousness"  (as  it  has  been 
admirably  called  by  Professor  M'Obvy)t  lie  hidden 
from  our  most  profound  physiologists.  It  was  once  my 
privilege  to  meet  the  master  of  physical  science  who  has 
rendered  famous  the  University  of  Kreigenswald,  J  and 
I  asked  him  what  in  his  opinion  was  the  cause  of  sleep. 
He  answered,  with  that  reverence  which  is  the  glory  of 

*  The  very  word  "  dormant  "  comes  from  the  Latin  for 
"  sleeping." 

t  I  knew  Professor  M'O.  in  the  sixties.  He  was  a  charm- 
ing and  cultured  Scotchman,  with  a  thorough  mastery  of  the 
English  tongue. 

X  Dr.  von  Lieber-Augustin.  I  knew  him  well.  He  was  a 
charming  and  cultured  German. 


LAMBKIN   ON   "SLEEP"  203 

the  Teutonic  mind,  "It  is  in  tlie  dear  secret  of  the  All- 
wise  Nature-mother  preserved."  I  have  never  forgotten 
those  wise  and  weighty  words.* 

Perhaps  the  nearest  guess  as  to  the  nature  of  Sleep  is 
to  be  discovered  in  the  lectures  of  a  brilliant  but  some- 
times over-daring  young  scholar  whom  we  all  applaud 
in  the  chair  of  Psychology.  "  Sleep  "  (he  says)  "  is  the 
direct  product  of  Brain  Somnolence,  which  in  its  turn  is 
the  result  of  the  need  for  Repose  that  every  organism 
must  experience  after  any  specialised  exertion."  I  was 
present  when  this  sentence  was  delivered,  and  I  am  not 
ashamed  to  add  that  I  was  one  of  those  who  heartily 
cheered  the  young  speaker.! 

We  may  assert,  then,  that  Science  has  nearly  con- 
quered this  last  stronghold  of  ignorance  and  super- 
stition, j 

As  to  the  Muses,  we  know  well  that  Sleep  has  been 
their  favourite  theme  for  ages.  With  the  exception  of 
Catullus  (whose  verses  have  been  greatly  over-rated,  and 
who  is  always  talking  of  people  lying  awake  at  night), 
all  the  ancients  have  mentioned  and  praised  this  inno- 
cent pastime.  Everyone  who  has  done  Greats  will 
remember  the  beautiful  passage  in  Lucretius,  §  but 
perhaps    that     in     Sidonius    Apollinaris,     the    highly 

*   How  different  from  the  cynical  ribaldry  of  Voltaire. 

+  Mr.  Buffin.  I  know  him  well.  His  uncle  is  Lord  Glen- 
altamont,  one  of  the  most  charming  and  cultured  of  our  new 
peers. 

+  See  especially  "  Hypnotism,"  being  the  researches  of  the 
Research  Society  (xiv.  vols.,  London,  1893),  and  "  Supersti- 
tions of  the  Past,  especially  the  belief  in  the  Influence  of  Sleep 
upon  Spells,"  by  Dr.  Beradini.  Translated  by  Mrs.  Blue. 
(London  :  'i'oobv  and  Co.,  1895.) 

S    Bk.  L  or  Bk.  IV. 


204  LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

pulibhfd  Libhop  of  Gaul,  is  less  well  known.*  To  turn 
to  our  own  literature,  the  sonnet  beginning  "  To  die,  to 
sleep,"  etc.,t  must  be  noted,  and  above  all,  the  glorious 
lines  in  which  Wordsworth  reaches  his  noblest  level, 
beginning — 

"  It  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  go  to  sleep  !" 

lines  which,  for  my  part,  I  can  never  read  without 
catching  some  of  their  magical  drowsy  influence,  t 

All  great  men  have  slept.  George  III.  frequently 
slept,  §  and  that  great  and  good  man  Wycliffe  was  in 
the  habit  of  reading  his  Scriptural  translations  and  his 
own  sermons  nightly  to  produce  the  desired  effect.  || 
The  Duke  of  Wellington  (whom  my  father  used  to  call 
"  The  Iron  Duke  ")  slept  on  a  little  bedstead  no  larger 
than  a  common  man's. 

As  for  the  various  positions  in  which  one  may  sleep, 
I  treat  of  them  in  my  little  book  of  Latin  Prose  for 
Schools,  which  is  coming  out  next  year.^ 

*  "  Amo  dorniire.  Sed  nunquam  dormio  post  nonas  horas 
nam  episcopus  sum  et  volo  dare  bonum  exemplum  fidelibus." 
App.  Sid.  Epistol.,  Bk.  III.,  Epist.  26.  (Libermach's  edi- 
tion.    Berlin,  1875.)     It  has  the  true  ring  of  the  fifth  century. 

t  So  Herrick,  in  his  famous  epigram  on  Buggins.  A  learned 
prelate  of  my  acquaintance  would  frequently  quote  this. 

X  The  same  lines  occur  in  several  other  poets.  Notably 
Tufper  and  Montgomery. 

§  See  "  Private  Memoirs  of  the  Court  of  Geo.  III.  and  the 
Regent,"  by  Mrs.  Fitz-H 1.  _ 

II  See  further,  The  Morning  Star  of  England,  in  Stirrers 
of  the  Nations  Series,"  by  the  Rev.  H.  Turmsey,  M.A.  Also 
Foes  and  Friends  of  John  of  Gaunt,  by  Miss  Matchkin. 

^  "  Latin  Proses,"  3s.  6d.  net.     Jason  and  Co.,  Piccadilly. 


VI 

LAMBKIN'S  ADVICE  TO  FRESHMEN 

Mr.     Lambkin     possessed     among    other    great     and 
gracious  qualities  the  habit  of  writing  to  his  nephew, 
Thomas  Ezekiel  Lambkin,*  who  entered  the  college  as 
an  undergraduate  when  his  uncle  was  some  four  years 
a  Fellow.     Of  many  such  communications  he  valued 
especially  this  which  I  print  below,  on  account  of  the 
curious  and  pathetic  circumstances  which  surrounded  it. 
Some  months   after   Thomas   had   been  given  his   two 
groups  and  had  left  the  University,  Mr.  Lambkin  was 
looking  over  some  books  in  a  second-hand  bookshop— not 
with  the  intention  of  purchasing  so  much  as  to  improve 
the  mind.     It  was  a  favourite  habit  of  his,  and  as  he 
was  deeply  engaged  in  a  powerful  romance  written  under 
the   pseudonym   of    "Marie   Corelli  "t    there   dropped 
from  its  pages  the  letter  which  he  had  sent  so  many 
years  before.     It  lay  in  its  original  envelope  unopened, 
and  on  turning  to  the  flyleaf  he  saw  the  name  of  his 
nephew  written.     It  had  once  been  his  !     The  boy  had 
so   treasured    the    little   missive   as   to   place   it    in   his 
favourite  book  1 

*  Now  doing  his  duty  to  the  Empire  nobly  as  a  cattle-man 
in  Minnesota. 

■f  Everyone  will  remember  the  striking  article  on  this  author 
in  The  Christian  Home  for  July,  1886.  It  was  from  Lambkin's 
pen. 

205 


2o6  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

Lambkin  was  so  justly  touched  by  the  incident  as  to 
purchase  the  volume,  asking  that  the  price  might  be 
entered  to  his  account,  which  was  not  then  of  any  long 
standing.  The  letter  he  docketed  "to  be  published 
after  my  death."  And  I  obey  the  wishes  of  my  revered 
friend  : 

"  Mv  DEAR  Thomas, 

"  Here  you  are  at  last  in  Oxford,  and  at  Burford, 
'a  Burford  Man.'  How  proud  your  mother  must  be 
and  even  your  father,  whom  I  well  remember  saying 
that  '  if  he  were  not  an  accountant,  he  would  rather  be 
a  Fellow  of  Burford  than  anything  else  on  earth.'  But 
it  was  not  to  be. 

"  The  life  you  are  entering  is  very  different  from  that 
which  you  have  left  behind.  When  you  were  at  school 
you  were  under  a  strict  discipline,  you  were  compelled 
to  study  the  classics  and  to  play  at  various  games. 
Cleanliness  and  truthfulness  were  enforced  by  punish- 
ment, while  the  most  instinctive  habits  of  decency  and 
good  manners  could  only  be  acquired  at  the  expense  of 
continual  application.  In  a  word,  '  you  were  a  child 
and  thought  as  a  child.' 

"  Now  all  that  is  changed,  you  are  free  (within 
limits)  to  follow  your  own  devices,  to  make  or  mar 
yourself.  But  if  you  use  Oxford  aright  she  will  make 
you  as  she  has  made  so  many  of  your  kind — a  perfect 
gentleman. 

"  But  enough  of  these  generalities.  It  is  time  to  turn 
to  one  or  two  definite  bits  of  advice  which  I  hope  you 
will  receive  in  the  right  spirit.  My  dear  boy,  I  want 
y(ni  to  lay  your  hand  in  mine  while  I  speak  to  you,  not 


LAMBKIN'S  ADVICE   TO  FRESHMEN     207 

as  an  uncle,  but  rather  as  an  elder  brother.  Promise  me 
three  things.  First,  never  to  gamble  in  any  form ; 
secondly,  never  to  drink  a  single  glass  of  wine  after 
dinner ;  thirdly,  never  to  purchase  anything  without 
paying  for  it  in  cash.  If  you  will  make  such  strict 
rules  for  yourself  and  keep  them  religiously  you  will 
find  after  years  of  constant  effort  a  certain  result 
developing  (as  it  were),  you  will  discover  with  delight 
that  your  character  is  formed  ;  that  you  have  neither  won 
nor  lost  money  at  hazards,  that  you  have  never  got 
drunk  of  an  evening,  and  that  you  have  no  debts.  Of 
the  first  two  I  can  only  say  that  they  are  questions  of 
morality  on  which  we  all  may,  and  all  do,  differ.  But 
the  third  is  of  a  vital  and  practical  importance.  Occa- 
sional drunkenness  is  a  matter  for  private  judgment,  its 
Tightness  or  wrongness  depends  upon  our  ethical  system ; 
but  debt  is  fatal  to  any  hope  of  public  success. 

"  I  hesitate  a  little  to  mention  one  further  point;  but 
— may  I  say  it? — will  you  do  your  best  to  avoid 
drinking  neat  spirits  in  the  early  morning — especially 
Brandy?  Of  course  a  Governor  and  Tutor,  whatever 
his  abilities,  gets  removed  in  his  sympathies  from  the 
younger  men.*  The  habit  may  have  died  out,  and  if 
so  I  will  say  no  more,  but  in  my  time  it  was  the  ruin  of 
many  a  fair  young  life. 

"Now  as  to  your  day  and  its  order.  First,  rise 
briskly  when  you  are  called,  and  into  your  cold  bath, 
you  young  doglf  No  shilly-shally;  into  it.  Don't 
splash  the  water  about  in  a  miserable  attempt  to  deceive 

*  Lambkin  was,  when  he  wrote  this  letter,  fully  twenty-six 
years  of  age. 

t  Only  a  playful  term  of  course. 


2o8  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

your  scout,  but  take  an  Honest  British  Cold  Bath  like  a 
man.  Soap  should  never  be  used  save  on  the  hands  and 
neck.  As  to  hot  baths,  never  ask  for  them  in  College, 
it  would  give  great  trouble,  and  it  is  much  better  to  take 
one  in  the  Town  for  a  shilling ;  nothing  is  more  refresh- 
ing than  a  good  hot  bath  in  the  Winter  Term. 

"  Next  you  go  out  and  '  keep  '  a  Mosque,  Synagogue, 
or  Meeting  of  the  Brethren,  though  if  you  can  agree 
with  the  system  it  is  far  better  to  go  to  your  College 
Chapel ;  it  puts  a  man  right  with  his  superiors  and  you 
obey  the  Apostolic  injunction.* 

"Then  comes  your  breakfast.  Eat  as  much  as  you 
can;  it  is  the  foundation  of  a  good  day's  work  in  the 
Vineyard.  But  what  is  this? — a  note  from  your  Tutor. 
Off  you  go  at  the  appointed  time,  and  as  you  may  be 
somewhat  nervous  and  diffident  I  will  give  you  a  little 
Paradigm,!  as  it  were,  of  a  Freshman  meeting  his 
Tutor  for  the  first  time. 

"  [^The  Student  enters,  and  as  he  is  half-way  through 
the  door  says :  ] 

"  St.  :  Good-morning  !  Have  you  noticed  what  the 
papers  say  about — \Here  mention  some  prominent  sub- 
ject of  the  day.  ] 

"  \^The  Tutor  does  not  answer  hut  goes  on  writing  in 
a  little  book;  at  last  he  looks  up  and  says:'] 

"  Tut.  :  Pray,  what  is  your  name? 

"  St.  :  M.  or  N. 

"Tut.:    What   have   you   read    before   coming   up, 

Mr.  ? 

*  A  considerable  discussion  has  arisen  as  to  the  meaning  of 
this. 
+  A  jocular  allusion. 


LAMBKIN'S  ADVICE   TO  FRESHMEN     209 

"St.  :  The  existing  Latin  authors  from  Ennius  to 
Sidonius  Appollinaris,  with  their  fragments.  The  Greek 
from  Sappho  to  Origen  including  Bacchylides. 

\_The  Tutor  makes  a  note  of  this  and  resumes   •   •   •] 

"  Tut.  :  Have  you  read  the  Gospels? 

"  St.  :  No,  Sir. 

"  Tut.  :  You  must  read  two  of  them  as  soon  as 
possible  in  the  Greek,  as  it  is  necessary  to  the  passing 
of  Divinity,  unless  indeed  you  prefer  the  beautiful  work 
of  Plato.     Come  at  ten  to-morrow.     Good-morning. 

"  St.  :  I  am  not  accustomed  to  being  spoken  to  in 
that  fashion. 

\^The  Tutor  will  turn  to  some  other  Student,  and  the 
-first  Student  will  leave  the  room.'\ 

"  I  have  little  more  to  say.  You  will  soon  learn  the 
customs  of  the  place,  and  no  words  of  mine  can 
efficiently  warn  you  as  experience  will.  Put  on  a  black 
coat  before  Hall,  and  prepare  for  that  meal  with  neat- 
ness, but  with  no  extravagant  display.  Do  not  wear 
your  cap  and  gown  in  the  afternoon,  do  not  show  an 
exaggerated  respect  to  the  younger  fellows  (except  the 
Chaplain),  on  the  one  hand,  nor  a  silly  contempt  for  the 
older  Dons  upon  the  other.  The  first  line  of  conduct  is 
that  of  a  timid  and  uncertain  mind ;  it  is  of  no  profit 
for  future  advancement,  and  draws  down  upon  one  the 
contempt  of  all.  The  second  is  calculated  to  annoy  as 
fine  a  body  of  men  as  any  in  England,  and  seriously  to 
affect  your  reputation  in  Society. 

"  You  will  find  in  every  college  some  club  which 
contains  the  wealthier  undergraduates  and  those  of 
prominent  position.      Join  it  if  possible  at  once  t)efore 

14 


2IO  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

you  are  known.  At  its  weekly  meeting  speak  soberly, 
but  not  pompously.  Enliven  your  remarks  with  occa- 
sional flashes  of  humour,  but  do  not  trench  upon  the 
ribald  nor  pass  the  boundary  of  right-reason.  Such 
excesses  may  provoke  a  momentary  laugh,  but  they 
ultimately  destroy  all  respect  for  one's  character. 
Remember  Lot's  wife  ! 

"  You  will  row,  of  course,  and  as  you  rush  down  to 
the  river  after  a  hurried  lunch  and  dash  up  to  do  a 
short  bit  of  reading  before  Hall,  your  face  will  glow 
with  satisfaction  at  the  thought  that  every  day  of  your 
life  will  be  so  occupied  for  four  years. 

"  Of  the  grosser  and  lower  evils  I  need  not  warn  you  : 
you  will  not  give  money  to  beggars  in  the  street,  nor 
lend  it  to  your  friends.  You  will  not  continually  expose 
your  private  thoughts,  nor  open  your  heart  to  every 
comer  in  the  vulgar  enthusiasm  of  some  whom  you  may 
meet.  No,  my  dear  Ezekiel,  it  would  be  unworthy  of 
your  name,  and  I  know  you  too  well,  to  fear  such  things 
of  you.  You  are  a  Gentleman,  and  that  you  may,  like 
a  gentleman,  be  always  at  your  ease,  courteous  on 
occasion,  but  familiar  never,  is  the  earnest  prayer  of 

"  JosiAH  Lambkin." 


iVII 

LAMBKIN'S  LECTURE  ON  "RIGHT" 

Of  the  effects  of  Mr.  Lambkin's  lectures,  the  greatest 
and  (I  .venture  to  think)  the  most  permanent  are  those 
that  followed  from  his  course  on  Ethics.  The  late 
Dean  of  Heaving-on-the-Marsh  (the  Honourable  Albert 
Nathan-Merivale,  the  first  name  adopted  from  his 
property  in  Rutland)  told  me  upon  one  occasion  that 
he  owed  the  direction  of  his  mind  to  those  lectures 
(under  Providence)  more  than  to  any  other  lectures  he 
could  remember. 

Very  much  the  same  idea  was  conveyed  to  me,  more 
or  less,  by  the  Bishop  of  Humbury,  who  turned  to  me 
in  hall,  only  a  year  ago,  with  a  peculiar  look  in  his 
eyes,  and  (as  I  had  mentioned  Lambkin's  name)  said 
suddenly,  like  a  man  who  struggles  with  an  emotion  :* 
"  Lambkin(  !)t  .  .  .  did  not  he  give  lectures  in  your 
hall  ...  on  Ethics?"  "Some,"  I  replied,  "were 
given  in  the  Hall,  others  in  Lecture  Room  No.  2  over 
the  glory-hole."  His  lordship  said  nothing,  but  there 
was  a  world  of  thought  and  reminiscence  in  his  eyes. 
May  we  not  —  knowing  his  lordship's  difficulties  in 
matters  of  belief,  and  his  final  victory — ascribe  some- 
thing of  this  progressive  and  salutary  influence  to  my 
dear  friend  ? 

*  "  Sicut  ut  homo  qui  " — my  readers  will  fill  in  the  rest, 
t  The  note  of  exclamation  is  my  own. 
211 


212  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

On  "Right" 

[Being  Lecture  V.  in  a  Course  of  Eight,  delivered  in  the 
Autumn  Term  of  1878.] 

We  have  now  proceeded  for  a  considerable  distance 
in  our  journey  towards  the  Sohition.  Of  eight  lectures, 
of  which  I  had  proposed  to  make  so  many  milestones  on 
the  road,  the  fifth  is  reached,  and  now  we  are  in 
measurable  distance  of  the  Great  Answer ;  the  Under- 
standing of  the  Relations  of  the  Particular  to  the 
Universal. 

It  is  an  easy,  though  a  profitable  task  to  wander  in 
what  the  late  Sir  Reginald  Hawke  once  called  in  a  fine 
phrase  "the  flowery  meads  and  bosky  dells  of  Positive 
Knowledge."  It  is  in  the  essence  of  any  modern 
method  of  inquiry  that  we  should  be  first  sure  of  our 
facts,  and  it  is  on  this  account  that  all  philosophical 
research  worthy  of  the  name  must  begin  with  the 
physical  sciences.  For  the  last  few  weeks  I  have  illus- 
trated my  lectures  with  chemical  experiments  and  occa- 
sionally with  large  coloured  diagrams,  which,  especially 
to  young  people  like  yourselves  have  done  not  a  little 
to  enliven  what  might  at  first  appear  a  very  dull  subject. 
It  is  therefore  with  happy,  hopeful  hearts,  with  spark- 
ling eyes  and  eager  appetite  that  we  leave  the  physical 
entry-hall  of  knowledge  to  approach  the  delicious  feast 
of  metaphysics. 

Rut  here  a  difficulty  confronts  us.  So  far  we  have 
followed  an  historical  development.  We  have  studied 
the  actions  of  savages  and  the  gestures  of  young  children ; 
we  have  inquired  concerning  the  habits  of  sleep-walkers, 
and    have    drawn    our    conclusions    from    the    attitudes 


LAMBKIN'S    LECTURE    ON    "RIGHT"     213 

adopted  in  special  manias.  So  far,  then,  we  have  been 
on  safe  ground.  We  have  proceeded  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown,  and  we  have  correlated  Psychology, 
Sociology,  Anatomy,  Morphology,  Physiology,  Geo- 
graphy, and  Theology  {here  Mr.  Darkin  of  Vast,  who 
had  been  ailing  a  long  time,  was  carried  out  in  a  faint ; 
Mr.  Lamhhin,  being  short-sighted,  did  not  fully  seize 
what  had  happened,  and  thinking  that  certain  of  his 
audience  were  leaving  the  Hall  without  permission,  he 
became  as  nearly  angry  as  was  possible  to  such  a  man. 
He  made  a  short  speech  07i  the  decay  of  manners,  and 
fell  into  several  bitter  epigrams.  It  is  only  just  to  say 
that,  on  learning  the  occasion  of  the  interruption,  he 
regretted  the  expression  "  strong  meat  for  babes  "  which 
had  escaped  him  at  the  time). 

So  far  so  good.  But  there  is  something  more.  No 
one  can  proceed  indefinitely  in  the  study  of  Ethics 
without  coming,  sooner  or  later,  upon  the  Conventional 
conception  of  Right.  I  do  not  mean  that  this  concep- 
tion has  any  philosophic  value.  I  should  be  the  last  to 
lay  down  for  it  those  futile,  empirical,  and  dogmatic 
foundations  which  may  satisfy  narrow,  deductive  minds. 
But  there  it  is,  and  as  practical  men  with  it  we  must 
deal.  What  is  Right?  Whence  proceeds  this  curious 
conglomeration  of  idealism,  mysticism,  empiricism,  and 
fanaticism  to  whic-h  the  name  has  been  given? 

It  is  impossible  to  say.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  lecturer 
to  set  forth  the  scheme  of  truth  :  to  make  (as  it  were)  a 
map  or  plan  of  Epistemology.  He  is  not  concerned  to 
demonstrate  a  point ;  he  is  not  bound  to  dispute  the 
attitude  of  opponents.  Let  them  fall  of  their  own 
weight  {Ruant  mole  sua).     It  is  mine  to  show  that  things 


214  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

may  be  thus  or  thus,  and  I  will  most  steadily  refuse  to 
be  drawn  into  sterile  argument  and  profitless  discussion 
with  mere  affirmations. 

"  The  involute  of  progression  is  the  subconscious 
evolution  of  the  particular  function."  No  close 
reasoner  will  deny  this.  It  is  the  final  summing  up  of 
all  that  is  meant  by  Development.  It  is  the  root  formula 
of  the  nineteenth  century  that  is  now,  alas  !  drawing  to 
a  close  under  our  very  eyes.  Now  to  such  a  funda- 
mental proposition  I  add  a  second.  "  The  .sentiment  of 
right  is  the  inversion  of  the  subconscious  function  in  its 
relation  to  the  indeterminate  ego."  This  also  I  take  to 
be  admitted  by  all  European  philosophers  in  Germany. 
Now  I  will  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  a  major  premiss 
when  it  is  absolutely  sound,  followed  by  a  minor  equally 
sound,  leads  to  a  sure  conclusion.  God  fulfils  himself 
in  many  ways,  and  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and 
earth,  Horatio,  than  are  dreamt  of  in  your  philo.sophy. 
Rut  I  take  this  tentatively  :  that  if  these  two  propo- 
sitions are  true  (and  we  have  the  word  of  Herr 
Waldteufel,*  who  lives  in  the  Woodstock  Road,  that 
it  is  true)  then  it  follows  conclusively  that  no  certainty 
can  be  arrived  at  in  these  matters.  I  would  especially 
recommend  you  on  this  point  {here  Mr.  Lambkin  changed 
his  lecturing  voice  for  a  species  of  conversational,  inter- 
ested, and  familiar  tone)  to  read  the  essay  by  the  late 
Dr.  Barton  in  Shots  at  the  Probable  :  you  will  also  find 
the  third  chapter  of  Mr.  Mendellsohn's  History  of  the 
Soul  very  useful.  Remember  also,  by  the  way,  to  con- 
sult the  footnote  on  p.   343,  of  Renan's  Anti-Christ. 

*  Author  of  "  Prussian  Morals." 


LAMBKIN'S    LECTURE    ON    "RIGHT"     215 

The  Master  of  St.  Dives'  Little  Journeys  in  the  Obvious 
is  light  and  amusing,  but  instructive  in  its  way. 

There  is  a  kind  of  attitude  {this  was  Lambkin's 
peroration,  and  he  was  justly  proud  of  it)  which  destroys 
nothing  but  creates  much :  which  transforms  without 
metamorphosis,  and  which  says  "  look  at  this,  I  have 
found  truth  !"  but  which  dares  not  say  "  look  away 
from  that — it  is  untrue." 

Such  is  our  aim.  Let  us  make  without  unmaking  and 
in  this  difficult  question  of  the  origin  of  Right,  the 
grand  old  Anglo-Saxon  sense  of  "Ought,"  let  us 
humbly  adopt  as  logicians,  but  grimly  pursue  as 
practical  men  some  such  maxim  as  what  follows  : 

"  Right  came  from  nothing,  it  means  nothing,  it  leads 
to  nothing ;  with  it  we  are  nothing,  but  without  it  we  are 
worse  than  nothing."* 

Next  Thursday  I  shall  deal  with  morality  in  inter- 
national relations. 

*  These  are  almost  the  exact  words  that  appeared  in  the 
subsequent  and  over -rated  book  of  Theophile  Gautier  : 
"  Rien  ne  mene  a  rien  cependant  tout  arrive." 


VIII 

LAMBKIN'S    SPECIAL    CORRE- 
SPONDENCE 

Lambkin  was  almost  the  first  of  that  great  band  of 
Oxford  Fellows  who  go  as  special  correspondents  for 
Newspapers  to  places  of  difficulty  and  even  of  danger. 
On  the  advantages  of  this  system  he  would  often  dilate, 
and  he  was  glad  to  see,  as  he  grew  to  be  an  older,  a 
wealthier,  and  a  wiser  man,  that  others  were  treading 
in  his  footsteps.  "  The  younger  men,"  he  would  say, 
' '  have  noticed  what  perhaps  I  was  the  first  to  see,  that 
the  Press  is  a  Power,  and  that  men  who  are  paid  to 
educate  should  not  be  ashamed  to  be  paid  for  any  form 
of  education."  He  was,  however,  astonished  to  see  how 
rapidly  the  letters  of  a  correspondent  could  now  be 
issued  as  a  book,  and  on  finding  that  such  publications 
were  arranged  for  separately  with  the  publishers,  and 
were  not  the  property  of  the  Newspapers,  he  expressed 
himself  with  a  just  warmth  in  condemnation  of  such 
a  trick. 

"  Sir  "  (said  he  to  the  Chaplain),  "  in  my  young  days 
we  should  have  scorned  to  have  faked  up  work,  well 
done  for  a  particular  object,  in  a  new  suit  for  the  sake 
of  wealth  "  ;  and  I  owe  it  to  Lambkin's  memory  to  say 
that  he  did  not  make  a  penny  by  his  "  Diary  on  the 
Deep,"*  in  which  he  collected  towards  the  end  of  his 

*  It  was  by  my  suggestion  (quorum  pars  farva  fui),  that 
was  added  the  motto  "  They  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships, 
they  see  the  wonders  of  the  Lord." 

2X6 


SPECIAL  CORRESPONDENCE  217 

life  his  various  letters  written  to  the  Newspapers,  and 
mostly  composed  at  sea. 

The  occasion  which  produced  the  following  letter  was 
the  abominable  suppression  by  Italian  troops  of  the 
Catholic  Riots  at  Rome  in  1873.  Englishmen  of  all 
parties  had  been  stirred  to  a  great  indignation  at  the 
new^s  of  the  atrocities.  "  As  a  nation  "  (to  quote  my 
dear  friend)  "  we  are  slow  to  anger,  but  our  anger  is 
terrible."    And  such  was  indeed  the  case. 

A  great  meeting  was  held  at  Hampstead,  in  which 
Mr.  Ram  made  his  famous  speech.  "This  is  not  a 
question  of  religion  or  of  nationality  but  of  manhood  " 
(he  had  said),  "  and  if  we  do  not  give  our  sympathy 
freely,  if  we  do  not  send  out  correspondents  to  inform 
us  of  the  truth,  if  we  do  not  meet  in  public  and  protest, 
if  we  do  not  write  and  speak  and  read  till  our  strength 
be  exhausted,  then  is  England  no  longer  the  England  of 
Cromwell  and  of  Peel." 

Such  public  emotion  could  not  fail  to  reach  Lambkin. 
I  remember  his  coming  to  me  one  night  into  my  rooms 
and  saying  "  George  "  (for  my  name  is  George),  "  I  had 
to-day  a  letter  from  Mr.  Solomon's  paper — Tlie  Sunday 
Englishman.  They  want  me  to  go  and  report  on  this 
infamous  matter,  and  I  will  go.  Do  not  attempt  to 
dissuade  me.  I  shall  return — if  God  spares  my  life — 
before  the  end  of  the  vacation.  The  offer  is  most 
advantageous  in  every  way  :  I  mean  to  England,  to  the 
cause  of  justice,  and  to  that  freedom  of  thought  without 
which  there  is  no  true  religion.  For,  understand  me, 
that  though  these  poor  wretches  are  Roman  Catholics, 
I  hold  that  every  man  should  have  justice,  and  my  blood 
boils  within  me." 


2iS  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

He  left  me  with  a  parting  grip  of  the  hand,  promis- 
ing to  bring  me  back  photographs  from  the  Museum  at 
Naples. 

If  the  letter  that  follows  appears  to  be  lacking  in  any 
full  account  of  the  Italian  army  and  its  infamies,  if  it 
is  observed  to  be  meagre  and  jejune  on  the  whole  subject 
of  the  Riots,  that  is  to  be  explained  by  the  simple  facts 
that  follow. 

When  Lambkin  sailed,  the  British  Fleet  had  already 
occupied  a  deep  and  commodious  harbour  on  the  coast 
of  Apulia,  and  public  irritation  was  at  its  height ;  but 
by  the  time  he  landed  the  Quirinal  had  been  forced  to 
an  apology,  the  Vatican  had  received  monetary  com- 
pensation, and  the  Piedmontese  troops  had  been  com- 
pelled to  evacuate  Rome. 

He  therefore  found  upon  landing  at  Leghorn*  a 
telegram  from  the  newspaper,  saying  that  his  services 
were  not  required,  but  that  the  monetary  engagements 
entered  into  by  the  proprietors  would  be  strictly 
adhered  to. 

Partly  pleased,  partly  disappointed,  Lambkin  re- 
turned to  Oxford,  taking  sketches  on  the  way  from 
various  artists  whom  he  found  willing  to  sell  their 
productions.  These  he  later  hung  round  his  room,  not 
on  nails  (which  as  he  very  properly  said,  defaced  the 
wall),  but  from  a  rail ; — their  colours  are  bright  and 
pleasing.  He  also  brought  me  the  photographs  I  asked 
him  for,  and  they  now  hang  in  my  bedroom. 

This  summary  must  account  for  the  paucity  of  the 
notes  that  follow,  and  the  fact  that  they  were  never 
published. 

*  Livorno  in  Italian. 


SPECIAL  CORRESPONDENCE  219 

[There  was  some  little  doubt  as  to  whether  certain 
strictures  on  the  First  Mate  in  Mr.  Lambkin's  letters 
did  not  affect  one  of  our  best  families.  Until  I  could 
make  certain  whether  the  Estate  should  be  credited  with 
a  receipt  on  this  account  or  debited  with  a  loss  I  hesi- 
tated to  publish.  Mr.  Lambkin  left  no  heirs,  but  he 
would  have  been  the  first  to  regret  (were  he  alive)  any 
diminution  of  his  small  fortune. 

I  am  glad  to  say  that  it  has  been  satisfactorily  settled, 
and  that  while  all  parties  have  gained  none  have  lost  by 
the  settlement.] 


THE    LETTERS 

S.S.  Borgia,  Oravesend, 

Sunday,  Seft.  2-]th,  1873. 

Whatever  scruples  I  might  have  had  in  sending  off 
my  first  letter  before  I  had  left  the  Thames,  and  upon 
such  a  day,  are  dissipated  by  the  emotions  to  which  the 
scenes  I  have  just  passed  through  give  rise.* 

What  can  be  more  marvellous  than  this  historic  river  ! 
All  is  dark,  save  where  the  electric  light  on  shore,  the 
river-boats'  lanterns  on  the  water,  the  gas-lamps  and 
the  great  glare  of  the  townf  dispel  the  gloom.  And 
over  the  river  itself,  the  old  Tamesis,  a  profound  silence 
reigns,  broken  only  by  the  whistling  of  the  tugs,   the 

*  Or  "  have  given  rise."  Myself  and  my  colleagues 
attempted  (or  had  attempted)  to  determine  this  point.  But 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  version  we  arrived  at  is  right 
both  in  grammar  and  in  fact.     The  MS.  is  confused. 

t  Though  posted  in  T.ravesend  this  letter  appears  to  have 
been  written  between  London  and  the  F.stuary.  Some  say  in 
Dead  Man's  Reach. 


220  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

hoarse  cries  of  the  bargemen  and  the  merry  banjo-party 
under  the  awning  of  our  ship.  All  is  still,  noiseless, 
and  soundless :  a  profound  silence  broods  over  the 
mighty  waters.     It  is  night. 

It  is  night  and  silent  !  Silence  and  night  !  The  two 
primeval  things  !  I  wonder  whether  it  has  ever  occurred 
to  the  readers  of  the  Sunday  EngUs]ima7i  to  travel  over 
the  great  waters,  or  to  observe  in  their  quiet  homes  the 
marvellous  silence  of  the  night?  Would  they  know  of 
what  my  thoughts  were  full?  They  were  full  of  those 
poor  Romans,  insulted,  questioned,  and  disturbed  by  a 
brutal  soldiery,  and  I  thought  of  this  :  that  we  who  go 
out  on  a  peculiarly  pacific  mission,  who  have  only  to 
write  while  others  wield  the  sword,  we  also  do  our  part. 
Pray  heaven  the  time  may  soon  come  wdien  an  English 
Protectorate  shall  be  declared  over  Rome  and  the  hate- 
ful rule  of  the  Lombard  foreigners  shall  cease.* 

There  is  for  anyone  of  the  old  viking  blood  a  kind 
of  fascination  in  the  sea.  The  screw  is  modern,  but  its 
vibration  is  the  very  movement  of  the  wild  white  oars 
that  brought  the  Northmen!  to  the  field  of  Senlac; 
Now  I  know  how  we  have  dared  and  done  all.  I  could 
conquer  Sicily  to-night. 

As  I  paced  the  deck,  an  officer  passed  and  slapped 
me  heartily  on  the  shoulder.  It  was  the  First  Mate.  A 
rough  diamond  but  a  diamond  none  the  less.  He  asked 
me  where  I  was  bound  to.  I  said  Leghorn.  He  then 
asked  me  if  I  had  all  I  needed  for  the  voyage.  It  seems 
that  I  had  strayed  on  to  the  part  of  the  deck  reserved 

*  This  passage  was  set  for  the  Latin  Prose  in  the  Burford 
Scholarship  of  1S75.  It  was  won  by  Mr.  Hurt,  now  Chaplain 
of  the  Wainmakers'  Guild. 

I   Norman.  +  Hastings. 


SPECIAL  CORRESPONDENCE  221 

for  the  second-class  passengers.  I  informed  him  of  his 
error.  He  laughed  heartily  and  said  we  shouldn't 
quarrel  about  that.  I  said  his  ship  seemed  to  be  a 
Saucy  Lass.  He  answered,  "  That's  all  right,"  asked 
me  if  I  played  "Turn-up  Jack,"  and  left  me.  It  is 
upon  men  like  this  that  the  greatness  of  England  is 
founded . 

Well,  I  will  "turn  in"  and  "go  below"  for  my 
watch;  "you  gentlemen  of  England"  who  read  the 
Sunday  Englishtnan,  you  little  know  what  life  is  like 
on  the  high  seas ;  but  we  are  one,  I  think,  when  it  comes 
to  the  love  of  blue  water. 

Posted  at  Dover,  Monday,  Sept.  28,   1873. 

We  have  dropped  the  pilot.  I  have  nothing  in  par- 
ticular to  write.  There  is  a  kind  of  monotony  about  a 
sea  voyage  which  is  very  depressing  to  the  spirits.  The 
sea  was  smooth  last  night,  and  yet  I  awoke  this  morning 
with  a  feeling  of  unquiet  to  which  I  have  long  been  a 
stranger,  and  which  should  not  be  present  in  a  healthy 
man.  I  fancy  the  very  slight  oscillation  of  the  boat  has 
something  to  do  Avith  it,  though  the  lady  sitting  next  to 
me  tells  me  that  one  only  feels  it  in  steamboats.  She 
said  her  dear  husband  had  told  her  it  was  "  the  smell  of 
the  oil  " — I  hinted  that  at  breakfast  one  can  talk  of 
other  things. 

The  First  Mate  sits  at  the  head  of  our  table.  I  do 
not  know  how  it  is,  but  there  is  a  lack  of  social  reaction 
on  board  a  ship.  A  man  is  a  seaman  or  a  passenger, 
and  there  is  an  end  of  it.  One  has  no  fixed  rank, 
and  the  wholesome  discipline  of  social  pressure  seems 
entirely  lost.     Thus  this  morning  the  First  Mate  called 


222  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

me  "The  Parson,"  and  1  had  no  way  to  resent  his 
familiarity.  But  he  meant  no  harm;  he  is  a  sterling 
fellow. 

After  breakfast  my  mind  kept  running  to  this  question 
of  the  Roman  Persecution,  and  (1  know  not  how)  certain 
phrases  kept  repeating  themselves  literally  "  ai 
nauseam  "  in  my  imagination.  They  kept  pace  with 
the  throb  of  the  steamer,  an  altogether  new  sensation, 
and  my  mind  seemed  (as  my  old  tutor,  Mr.  Blurt,  would 
put  it)  to  "  work  in  a  circle."  The  pilot  will  take  this. 
He  is  coming  over  the  side.  He  is  not  in  the  least  like 
a  sailor,  but  small  and  white.  He  wears  a  bowler  hat, 
and  looks  more  like  a  city  clerk  than  anything  else. 
When  I  asked  the  First  Mate  why  this  was,  he  answered, 
"  It's  the  Brains  that  tell."  A  very  remarkable  state- 
ment, and  one  full  of  menace  and  warning  for  our 
mercantile  marine. 


Thursday,  Oct.  i,  1873. 

I  cannot  properly  describe  the  freslmess  and  beauty 
of  the  sea  after  a  gale.  I  have  not  the  style  of  the  great 
masters  of  English  prose,  and  I  lack  the  faculty  of 
expression  which  so  often  accompanies  the  poetic  soul. 

The  white  curling  tips  (white  horses)  come  at  one  if 
one  looks  to  windward,  or  if  one  looks  to  leeward  seem 
to  flee.  There  is  a  kind  of  balminess  in  the  air  born  of 
the  warm  south ;  and  there  is  a  jollity  in  the  whole  ship's 
company,  as  Mrs.  Burton  and  her  daughters  remarked 
to  me  this  morning.  I  feel  capable  of  anything.  When 
the  First  Mate  came  up  to  me  this  morning  and  tried 
to  bait  me  with  his  vulgar  chaff  I  answered  roundly, 


SPECIAL  CORRESPONDENCE  223 

"  Now,  sir,  listen  to  me.  1  am  not  seasick,  I  am  not 
a  landlubber,  I  am  on  my  sea  legs  again,  and  I  would 
have  you  know  that  I  have  not  a  little  power  to  make 
those  who  attack  me  feel  the  weight  of  my  arm." 

He  turned  from  me  thoroughly  ashamed,  and  told  a 
man  to  swab  the  decks.  The  passengers  appeared 
absorbed  in  their  various  occupations,  but  I  felt  I  had 
"  scored  a  point  "  and  I  retired  to  my  cabin. 

My  steward  told  me  of  a  group  of  rocks  off  the 
Spanish  coast  which  we  are  approaching.  He  said  they 
were  called  "  The  Graveyard."  If  a  man  can  turn  his 
mind  to  the  Universal  Consciousness  and  to  a  Final 
Purpose  all  foolish  fears  will  fall  into  a  secondary 
plane.  I  will  not  do  myself  the  injustice  of  saying  that 
I  was  affected  by  the  accident,  but  a  lady  or  child  might 
have  been,  and  surely  the  ship's  servants  should  be 
warned  not  to  talk  nonsense  to  passengers  who  need  all 
their  strength  for  the  sea. 

Friday,  Oct.  2,   187J. 

To-day  I  met  the  Captain.  I  went  up  on  the  bridge 
to  speak  to  him.  I  find  his  name  is  Arnssen.  He  has 
risen  from  the  ranks,  his  father  having  been  a  large 
haberdasher  in  Copenhagen  and  a  town  councillor.  I 
wish  I  could  say  the  same  of  the  First  Mate,  who  is  the 
scapegrace  son  of  a  great  English  family,  though  he 
seems  to  feel  no  shame.  Arnssen  and  I  would  soon 
become  fast  friends  were  it  not  that  his  time  is  occupied 
in  managing  the  ship.  He  is  just  such  an  one  as  makes 
the  strength  of  our  British  Mercantile  marine.  He  will 
often  come  and  walk  with  me  on  the  deck,  on  which 
occasions  I  give  him  a  cigar,  or  even  sometimes  ask  him 


224  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

to  drink  wine  with  me.  He  tells  me  it  is  against  the 
rules  for  the  Captain  to  offer  similar  courtesies  to  his 
guests,  but  that  if  ever  I  am  in  Ernskjoldj,  near  Copen- 
hagen, and  if  he  is  not  absent  on  one  of  his  many 
voyages,  he  will  gratefully  rememl)er  and  repay  my 
kindness. 

I  said  to  the  Captain  to-day,  putting  my  hand  upon 
his  shoulder,  "  Sir,  may  one  speak  from  one's  heart?" 
"Yes,"  said  he,  "certainly,  and  God  bless  you  for 
your  kind  thought."  "  Sir,"  said  I,  "  you  are  a  strong, 
silent.  God-fearing  man  and  my  heart  goes  out  to  you — 
no  more."  He  was  silent,  and  went  up  on  the  bridge, 
but  when  I  attempted  to  follow  him,  he  assured  me  it 
was  not  allowed. 

Later  in  the  day  I  asked  him  what  he  thought  of  the 
Roman  trouble.  He  answered,  "  Oh  !  knock  their  heads 
together  and  have  done  with  it."  It  was  a  bluff  sea- 
man's answer,  but  is  it  not  what  England  would  have 
said  in  her  greatest  days  ?  Is  it  not  the  very  feeling  of 
a  Chatham  ? 

I  no  longer  speak  to  the  First  Mate.  But  in  a  few 
days  I  shall  be  able  to  dismiss  the  fellow  entirely  from 
my  memory,  so  I  will  not  dwell  on  his  insolence. 

Leghorn, 

Oct.  5,  187J. 

Here  is  the  end  of  it.  I  have  nothing  more  to  say. 
I  find  that  the  public  has  no  need  of  my  services,  and 
that  England  has  suffered  a  disastrous  rebuff.  The 
fleet  has  retreated  from  Apulia.  England — let  posterity 
note  this — has  not  an  inch  of  ground  in  all  the  Italian 
Peninsula.     Well,  %ve  are  worsted,  and  we  must  bide 


SPECIAL  CORRESPONDENCE  225 

our  time;  but  this  I  will  say:  if  that  insolent  young 
fool  the  First  Mate  thinks  that  his  family  shall  protect 
him  he  is  mistaken.  The  press  is  a  great  power  and 
never  greater  than  where  (as  in  England)  a  professor  of 
a  university  or  the  upper  classes  write  for  the  papers, 
and  where  a  rule  of  anonymity  gives  talent  and  position 
its  full  Aveight.* 

*  These  letters  were  never  printed  till  now. 


15 


IX 

LAMBKIN'S  ADDRESS  TO  THE  LEAGUE 
OF  PROGRESS 

Everybody  will  remember  the  famous  meeting  of  the 
Higher  Spinsters  in  1868;  a  body  hitherto  purely 
voluntary  in  its  organisation,  it  had  undertaken  to  add 
to  the  houses  of  the  poor  and  wretched  the  element 
which  reigns  in  the  residential  suburbs  of  our  great 
towns.  If  Whitechapel  is  more  degraded  now  than  it 
was  thirty  years  ago  we  must  not  altogether  disregard 
the  earlier  efforts  of  the  Higher  Spinsters,  they  laboured 
well  each  in  her  own  sphere  and  in  death  they  were  not 
divided. 

The  moment  however  which  gave  their  embryonic 
conceptions  an  organic  form  did  not  sound  till  this 
year  of  1868.  It  was  in  the  Conference  held  at  Burford 
during  that  summer  that,  to  quote  their  eloquent  circular, 
"  the  ideas  were  mooted  and  the  feeling  was  voiced 
which  made  us  what  we  are."  In  other  words,  the 
Higher  Spinsters  were  merged  in  the  new  and  greater 
society  of  the  League  of  Progress.  How  much  the 
League  of  Progress  has  done,  its  final  recognition  by  the 
County  Council,  the  sums  paid  to  its  organisers  and 
servants  I  need  not  here  describe ;  suffice  it  to  say  that, 
like  all  our  great  movements,  it  was  a  spontaneous 
effort  of  the  upper  middle  class,  that  it  concerned  itself 

226 


ADDRESS  TO  LEAGUE  OF  PROGRESS     227 

chiefly  with  the  artisans,  whom  it  desired  to  raise  to  its 
own  level,  and  that  it  has  so  far  succeeded  as  to  now 
possess  forty-three  Cloisters  in  our  great  towns,  each 
with  its  Grand  Master,  Chatelaine,  Corporation  of  the 
Burghers  of  Progress  and  Lay  Brothers,  the  whole 
supported  upon  salaries  suitable  to  their  social  rank  and 
proceeding  entirely  from  voluntary  contributions  with 
the  exception  of  that  part  of  the  revenue  which  is  drawn 
from  public  funds. 

The  subject  of  the  Conference,  out  of  which  so  much 
was  destined  to  grow,  was  "  The  Tertiary  Symptoms  of 
Secondary  Education  among  the  Poor." 

Views  upon  this  matter  were  heard  from  every 
possible  standpoint;  men  of  varying  religious  per- 
suasions from  the  Scientific  Agnostic  to  the  distant 
Parsee  lent  breadth  and  elasticity  to  the  fascinating 
subject.  Its  chemical  aspect  was  admirably  described 
(with  experiments)  by  Sir  Julius  Wobble,  the  Astronomer 
Royal,  and  its  theological  results  by  the  Reader  in 
Burmesan. 

Lambkin  was  best  known  for  the  simple  eloquence  in 
which  he  could  clothe  the  most  difficult  and  confused 
conceptions.  It  was  on  this  account  that  he  was  asked 
to  give  the  Closing  Address  with  which  the  Proceedings 
terminated. 

Before  recitingTTT  must  detain  the  reader  with  one 
fine  anecdote  concerning  this  occasion,  a  passage  worthy 
of  the  event  and  of  the  man.  Lambkin  (as  I  need  hardly 
say)  was  full  of  his  subject,  enthusiastic  and  absorbed. 
No  thought  of  gain  entered  his  head,  nor  was  he  the 
kind  of  man  to  have  applied  for  payment  unless  he 
believed  money  to  be  owing   to  him.      Nevertheless  it 


228  LAMTIKIN'S   REMAINS 

would  have  l^en  impossil)le  to  leave  unremuneraterl  such 
work  as  that  which  follows.  It  was  decided  by  the 
authorities  to  pay  him  a  sum  drawn  from  the  fees  which 
the  visitors  had  paid  to  visit  the  College  Fish-Ponds, 
whose  mediaeval  use  in  monkish  times  was  explained  in 
popular  style  by  one  who  shall  be  nameless,  but  who 
gave  his  services  gratuitously. 

After  their  departure  Mr.  Large  entered  Lambkin's 
room  with  an,  envelope,  wishing  to  add  a  personal 
courtesy  to  a  pleasant  duty,  and  said  : 

"  I  have  great  pleasure,  my  dear  Lambkin,  in  pre- 
senting you  with  this  Bank  Note  as  a  small  acknow- 
ledgment of  your  services  at  the  Conference." 

Lambkin  answered  at  once  with  : 

"My  dear  Large,  I  shall  be  really  displeased  if  you 
estimate  that  slight  performance  of  a  pleasurable  task 
at  so  high  a  rate  as  ten  pounds." 

Nor  indeed  was  this  the  case.  For  when  Lambkin 
opened  the  enclosure  (having  waited  with  delicate 
courtesy  for  his  visitor  to  leave  the  room)  he  discovered 
but  five  pounds  therein.  But  note  what  follows — 
Lambkin  neither  mentioned  the  matter  to  a  soul,  nor 
passed  the  least  stricture  upon  Large's  future  actions, 
save  in  those  matters  where  he  found  his  colleague  justly 
to  blame  :  and  in  the  course  of  the  several  years  during 
which  they  continually  met,  the  restraint  and  self- 
respect  of  his  character  saved  him  from  the  use  of 
ignoble  weapons  whether  of  pen  or  tongue.  It  was  a 
lesson  in  gentlemanly  irony  to  see  my  friend  take  his 
place  above  Large  at  high  table  in  the  uneasy  days  that 
followed. 


ADDRESS  TO  LEAGUE  OF  PROGRESS     229 


THE   ADDRESS 

My  dear  Friends, 

I  shall  attempt  10  put  before  you  in  a  few 
simple,  but  I  hope  well-chosen  words,  the  views  of  a 
plain  man  upon  the  great  subject  before  us  to-day.  I 
shall  attempt  with  the  greatest  care  to  avoid  any  per- 
sonal offence,  but  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  use  the  knife 
with  an  unsparing  hand,  as  is  indeed  the  duty  of  the 
Pastor  whosoever  he  may  be.  I  remember  a  late  dear 
friend  of  mine  [who  would  not  wish  me  to  make  his 
name  public  but  whom  you  will  perhaps  recognise  in  the 
founder  and  builder  of  the  new  Cathedral  at  Isaacsville 
in  Canada*].  I  remember  his  saying  to  me  with  a 
merry  twinkle  of  the  eye  that  looms  only  from  the  free 
manhood  of  the  west:  "Lambkin,"  said  he,  "would 
you  know  how  I  made  my  large  fortune  in  the  space  of 
but  three  months,  and  how  I  have  attained  to  such 
dignity  and  honour?  It  was  by  following  this  simple 
maxim  which  my  dear  mother t  taught  me  in  the  rough 
log-cabin  I  of  my  birth  :  '  Be  courteous  to  all  strangers, 
but  familiar  with  none.'  "§ 

My  friends,  you  are  not  strangers,  nay,  on  the  present 

*  The  late  Hon.  John  Tupton,  the  amiable  colonial  who 
purchased  Marlborough  House  and  made  so  great  a  stir  in 
London  some  years  ago. 

t  Mrs.  Tupton,  senior,  a  woman  whose  heroic  struggles  in 
the  face  of  extreme  poverty  were  a  continual  commentary  on 
the  awful  results  of  our  so-called  perfected  Penal  System. 

+  There  is  great  doubt  upon  the  exactitude  of  this.  In  his 
lifetime  Tupton  often  spoke  of  "the  poor  tenement  house  in 
New  York  where  1  was  born,"  and  in  a  letter  he  alludes  to 
"  my  birth  at  sea  in  the  steerage  of  a  Liner." 

§  This  was  perhaps  the  origin  of  a  phrase  which  may  be 
found  scattered  with  profusion  throughout  Lambkin's  works. 


230  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

solemn  occasion  I  think  I  may  call  you  friends — even 
brethren  ! — dear  brothers  and  sisters  !  But  a  little  bird 
has  told  me.  .  .  .  {Hire  a  genial  smile  passed  over  his 
face  and  he  drank  a  draught  of  -pure  cold  water  from  a 
tumbler  at  his  side.)  A  little  bird  has  told  me,  I  say, 
that  some  of  you  feared  a  trifle  of  just  harshness,  a 
reprimand  perhaps,  or  a  warning  note  of  danger,  at  the 
best  a  doubtful  and  academic  temper  as  to  the  future. 
Fear  nothing.  I  shall  pursue  a  far  different  course,  and 
however  courteous  I  m.ay  be  I  shall  indulge  in  no 
familiarities. 

"  The  Tertiary  Symptoms  of  Secondary  Education 
among  the  Poor"  is  a  noble  phrase  and  expresses  a 
noble  idea.  Why  the  very  words  are  drawn  from  our 
Anglo-Saxon  mother-tongue  deftly  mingled  with  a  few 
expressions  borrowed  from  the  old  dead  language  of 
long-past  Greece  and  Rome. 

What  is  Education?  The  derivation  of  the  word 
answers  this  question.  It  is  from  "e"  that  is  "out 
of,"  "  duc-o  "  "  I  lead,"  from  the  root  Due— to  lead, 
to  govern  (whence  we  get  so  many  of  our  most  important 
words  such  as  "  Duke  "  ;  "  Duck  "  =  a  drake;  etc.)  and 
finally  the  termination  "  -tio  "  which  corresponds  to  the 
English  "  -ishness."  We  may  then  put  the  whole  phrase 
in  simple  language  thus,  "  The  threefold  Showings  of 
twofold  Led-out-of-ishness  among  the  Needy." 

The  Needy  !  The  Poor  !  Terrible  words  !  It  has 
been  truly  said  that  we  have  them  always  with  us.  It 
is  one  of  our  peculiar  glories  in  nineteenth-century 
England,  that  we  of  the  upper  classes  have  fully  recog- 
nised our  heavy  responsibility  towards  our  weaker  fellow- 
citizens.     Not  by  Revolution,  which  is  dangerous  and 


ADDRESS  TO  LEAGUE  OF  PROGRESS     231 

vain,  not  by  heroic  legislation  or  hair-brained  schemes 
of  universal  panaceas,  not  by  frothy  Utopias.  No  ! — 
by  solid  hard  work,  by  quiet  and  persistent  effort,  with 
the  slow  invisible  tenacity  that  won  the  day  at  Badajoz, 
we  have  won  this  great  social  victory.  And  if  anyone 
should  ask  me  for  the  result  I  should  answer  him— go 
to  Bolton,  go  to  Manchester,  go  to  Liverpool ;  go  to 
Hull  or  Halifax — the  answer  is  there. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  this  good  work  is 
proceeding.  Life  is  a  gem  of  many  facets.  Some  of 
my  friends  take  refuge  in  Prayer,  others  have  joined  the 
Charity  Organisation  Society,  others  again  have  laboured 
in  a  less  brilliant  but  fully  as  useful  a  fashion  by  writing 
books  upon  social  statistics  which  command  an  enormous 
circulation.  You  have  turned  to  education,  and  you 
have  done  well.  Show  me  a  miner  or  a  stevedore  who 
attends  his  lectures  upon  Rossetti,  and  I  will  show  you 
a  man.  Show  me  his  wife  or  daughter  at  a  cookery 
school  or  engaged  in  fretwork,  and  I  will  show  you  a 
woman.     A  man  and  a  woman — solemn  thought  ! 

A  noble  subject  indeed  and  one  to  occupy  the  whole 
life  of  a  man!  This  "Education,"  this  "  Leading- 
out-of,"  is  the  matter  of  all  our  lives  here  in  Oxford 
except  in  the  vacation.*  And  what  an  effect  it  has  ! 
Let  me  prove  it  in  a  short  example. 

At  a  poor  lodging-house  in  Lafayette,  Pa.,  U.S.A., 
three  well-educated  men  from  New  England  who  had 
fallen  upon  evil  times  were  seated  at  a  table  surrounded 
by  a  couple  of  ignorant  and  superstitious  Irishmen ; 
the.se  poor  untaught  creatures,  presuming  upon  their 
numbers,  did  not  hesitate  to  call  the  silent  and  gentle- 

*  Mr.  Lambkin  did  not  p;ive  the  dr-rivation  of  this  word. 


232  LAMUKIN'S    REMAINS 

manly  unfortunates  "  Dommed  High-faluthing  Fules"; 
but  mark  the  sequel.  A  fire  broke  out  in  the  night. 
The  house  was  full  of  these  Irishmen  and  of  yet  more 
repulsive  Italians.  Some  were  consumed  by  the  devour- 
ing element,  others  perished  in  the  flames,  others  again 
saved  their  lives  by  a  cowardly  flight.*  But  what  of 
those  three  from  Massachusetts  whom  better  principles 
had  guided  in  youth  and  with  whom  philosophy  had 
replaced  the  bitter  craft  of  the  Priest?  They  were 
found — my  dear  friends — they  were  found  still  seated 
calmly  at  the  table ;  they  had  not  moved  ;  no  passion 
had  blinded  them,  no  panic  disturbed  :  in  their  charred 
and  blackened  features  no  trace  of  terror  was  apparent. 
Such  is  the  effect,  such  the  glory  of  what  my  late  master 
and  guide,  the  Professor  of  Tautology,  used  to  call  the 
"  Principle  of  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest." 

{Applause,  which  was  only  checked  by  a  consideration 
for  the  respect  due  to  the  Sacred  edifice.) 

Go  forth  then  !  Again  I  say  go  forth  !  Go  forth  ! 
Go  forth  !  The  time  is  coming  when  England  will  see 
that  your  claims  to  reverence,  recognition,  and  emolu- 
ment are  as  great  as  our  own.  I  repeat  it,  go  forth,  and 
when  you  have  brought  the  great  bulk  of  families  to 
change  their  mental  standpoint,  then  indeed  you  will 
have  transformed  the  world  !  For  without  the  mind  the 
human  intellect  is  nothing. 

*  "  Alii  igni  infamiae  vitamalii  fuga  dederunt." — Tacitus, 
In  Omnes  Caesares,  I.  viii.  7 


X 

LAMBKIN'S  LEADER 

Mr.  Solomon  was  ever  determined  to  keep  the  Sunday 
Englis/tman  at  a  high  level.  "  We  owe  it  "  (he  would 
say)  "first  to  the  public  who  are  thereby  sacrificed — I 
mean  satisfied — and  to  ourselves,  who  secure  thereby  a 
large  and  increasing  circulation. "  [  "  Ourselves ' '  alluded 
to  the  shareholders,  for  the  Sunday  Englishman  was  a 
limited  Company,  in  which  the  shares  (of  which  Mr. 
Solomon  held  the  greater  number)  were  distributed  in 
the  family ;  the  tiniest  toddler  of  two  years  old  was 
remembered,  and  had  been  presented  with  a  share  by  his 
laughing  and  generous  parent.] 

In  this  laudable  effort  to  keep  "abreast  of  the 
times"  (as  he  phrased  it),  the  Editor  and  part  Pro- 
prietor determined  to  have  leaders  written  by  University 
men,  who  from  their  position  of  vantage  enjoy  a  unique 
exj)erience  in  practical  matters.  He  had  formed  a  very 
high  opinion  of  Lambkin's  journalistic  capacity  from  his 
unpublished  letters  as  a  special  correspondent.  Indeed, 
he  was  often  heard  to  say  that  "  a  man  like  him  was 
lost  at  Oxford,  and  was  born  for  Fleet  Street."  He 
wrote,  therefore,  to  Mr.  Lambkin  and  gave  him  "  Carte 
Blanche,"  as  one  French  scholar  to  another,  sending 
him  only  the  general  directions  that  his  leader  must  be 
"  smart,  up-to-date,  and  with  plenty  of  push,"  it  was 
to  be  "neither  too  long  nor  too  short,"   and  while  it 

233 


234  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

should  be  written  in  an  easy  familiar  tone,  there  should 
be  little  or  no  seriously  offensive  matter  included. 

Mr.  Lambkin  was  delighted,  and  when  at  his  request 
the  article  had  been  paid  for,  he  sent  in  the  following  : 

THE    LEADER 

"  The  English-Speaking  Race  has — if  we  except  the 
Dutch,  Negro,  and  Irish  elements — a  marvellous  talent 
for  self-government.  From  the  earliest  origins  of  our 
Anglo-Saxon  forefathers  to  the  latest  Parish  Council, 
guided  but  not  controlled  by  the  modern  *  Mass  Thegen  ' 
or  local  '  Gesithcund  man,'  this  talent,  or  rather  genius, 
is  apparent.  We  cannot  tell  why,  in  the  inscrutable 
designs  of  Providence,  our  chosen  race  should  have  been 
so  specially  gifted,  but  certain  it  is  that  wherever  plain 
ordinary  men  such  as  1  who  write  this  and  you  who  read 
it*  may  be  planted,  there  they  cause  the  desert  to 
blossom,  and  the  waters  to  gush  from  the  living  rock. 
Who  lias  not  known,  whether  among  his  personal 
acquaintance  or  from  having  read  of  him  in  books,  the 
type  of  man  who  forms  the  strength  of  this  mighty 
national  organism?  And  who  has  not  felt  that  he  is 
himself  something  of  that  kidney?  We  stand  aghast  at 
our  own  extraordinary  power,  and  it  has  been  finely 
said  that  Nelson  was  greater  than  he  knew.  From  one 
end  of  the  earth  to  the  other  the  British  language  is 
spoken  and  understood.  The  very  words  that  I  am 
writing  will  be  read  to-morrow  in  London,  the  day  after 
in  Oxford — and  from  this  it  is  but  a  step  to  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth, 

*  The  italicised  words  were  omitted  in  the  article. 


LAMBKIN'S  LEADER  235 

"  Under  these  conditions  of  power,  splendour,  and 
domination  it  is  intolerable  that  the  vast  metropolis  of 
this  gigantic  empire  should  be  pestered  with  crawling 
cabs.  There  are  indeed  many  things  which  in  the 
Divine  plan  have  it  in  their  nature  to  crawl.  We  of  all 
the  races  of  men  are  the  readiest  to  admit  the  reign  of 
universal  law.  Meaner  races  know  not  the  law,  but  we 
are  the  children  of  the  law,  and  where  crawling  is  part 
of  the  Cosmos  we  submit  and  quit  ourselves  like  men, 
being  armed  with  the  armour  of  righteousness.  Thus  no 
Englishman  (whatever  foreigners  may  feel)  is  offended 
at  a  crawling  insect  or  worm.  A  wounded  hare  will 
crawl,  and  we  Read  that  '  the  serpent  was  cursed  and 
crawled  upon  his  belly  ' ;  again,  Aristotle  in  his  Ethics 
talks  of  those  whose  nature  (</)rms)  it  is  '  epTretv,'  which 
is  usually  translated  'to  crawl,'  and  Kipling  speaks  of 
fifes  'crawling.'  With  all  this  we  have  no  quarrel,  but 
the  crawling  cab  is  a  shocking  and  abominable  thing; 
and  if  the  titled  owners  of  hansoms  do  not  heed  the 
warning  in  time  they  will  find  that  the  spirit  of  Crom- 
well is  not  yet  dead,  and  mayhap  the  quiet  determined 
people  of  this  realm  will  rise  and  sweep  them  and  their 
gaudy  gew-gaws  and  their  finicky  high-stepping  horses, 
and  their  perched-up  minions,  from  the  fair  face  of 
England." 


XI 

LAMBKIN'S  REMARKS  ON  THE  END 
OF  TERM 

Delivered  in  Hall  on  Saturday,  Dec.  6th,  1S87,  the  morning 
ufon  which  the  College  went  down. 

My  dear  Friends  ;  my  dear  Undergraduate  Mem- 
bers OF  THIS  College, 

The  end  of  Term  is  approaching — nay,  is  here. 
A  little  more,  and  we  shall  meet  each  other  no  longer 
for  six  weeks.  It  is  a  solemn  and  a  sacred  thought.  It 
is  not  the  sadness,  and  even  the  regret,  that  takes  us  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Long  Vacation.  This  is  no  defini- 
tive close.  We  lose  (I  hope)  no  friends ;  none  leave  us 
for  ever,  unless  I  may  allude  to  the  young  man  whom 
few  of  you  knew,  but  through  whose  criminal  folly  the 
head  of  this  foundation  has  lost  the  use  of  one  eye. 

This  is  not  a  time  of  exaltation,  so  should  it  not  be  a 
time  for  too  absolute  a  mourning.  This  is  not  the  end 
of  the  Easter  Term,  nor  of  the  Summer  Term.  It  is 
the  end  of  Michaelmas  Term.  That  is  the  fact,  and 
facts  must  be  looked  in  the  face.  What  are  we  to  do 
with  the  approaching  vacation?  What  have  we  done 
with  the  past  term? 

In  the  past  term  (I  think  I  can  answer  for  some  of 
you)  a  much  deeper  meaning  has  entered  into  your  lives. 
Especially  you,  the  young  freshmen  (happily  I  have  had 

236 


REMARKS  ON  THE  END  OF  TERM   237 

the  control  of  many,  the  teaching  of  some),  I  know  that 
life  has  become  fuller  for  you.  That  half-hour  a  week 
to  which  you  pay  so. little  heed  will  mean  much  in  later 
years.  You  have  come  to  me  in  batches  for  half-an-hour 
a  week,  and  each  of  you  has  thus  enjoyed  collectively 
the  beginning  of  that  private  control  and  moulding  of 
the  character  which  is  the  object  of  all  our  efforts  here 
in  Oxford.  And  can  you  not,  as  you  look  back,  see 
what  a  great  change  has  passed  over  you  in  the  short 
few  months  ?  I  do  not  mean  the  corporeal  change  in- 
volved by  our  climate  or  our  prandial  habits  3  neither  do 
I  allude  to  the  change  in  your  dress  and  outward  appear- 
ance.    I  refer  to  the  mental  transformation. 

You  arrived  sure  of  a  number  of  things  which  you 
had  learnt  at  school  or  at  your  mother's  knee.  Of  what 
are  you  certain  now  ?  Of  nothing  !  It  is  necessary  in 
the  mysterious  scheme  of  education  that  this  blind  faith 
or  certitude  should  be  laid  as  a  foundation  in  early 
youth.  But  it  is  imperative  that  a  man — if  he  is  to  be 
a  man  and  not  a  monster — should  lose  it  at  the  outset 
of  his  career.  My  young  friends,  I  have  given  you  the 
pearl  of  great  price.     You  have  begun  to  doubt. 

Half-an-hour  a  week — four  hours  in  all  the  term 
.  ,  .  could  any  positive,  empirical,  or  dogmatic  teach- 
ing have  been  conveyed  in  that  time,  or  with  so  much 
fullness  as  the  great  scheme  of  negation  can  be?  I 
trow  not. 

So  much  for  knowledge  and  tutorship.  What  of 
morals?  It  is  a  delicate  subject,  but  I  will  treat  of  it 
boldly.  You  all  remember  how,  shortly  after  the  month 
of  October,  the  College  celebrated  Guy  Fawkes'  Day  : 
the  elders,  by  a  dinner  in  honour  of  their  founder,  the 


238  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

juniors  by  lighting  a  bonfire  in  the  quadrangle.  You  all 
know  what  followed.  I  do  not  wish  to  refer  again- — 
certainly  not  with  bitterness — to  the  excesses  of  that 
evening ;  but  the  loss  of  eyesight  is  a  serious  thing,  and 
one  that  the  victim  may  forgive,  but  hardly  can  forget. 
I  hope  the  lesson  will  suffice,  and  that  in  future  no  fellow 
of  this  College  will  have  to  regret  so  serious  a  disfigure- 
ment at  the  hands  of  a  student. 

To  pass  to  lighter  things.  The  Smoking  Concert  on 
All  Souls'  Day  was  a  great  success.  I  had  hoped  to 
organise  some  similar  jollity  on  Good  Friday,  but  I  find 
that  it  falls  in  the  Easter  vacation.  It  is,  however,  aa 
excellent  precedent,  and  we  will  not  fail  to  have  one  on 
some  other  festal  occasion.  To  the  action  of  one  of  our 
least  responsible  members  I  will  not  refer.  But  surely 
there  is  neither  good  breeding  nor  decency  in  dressing 
up  as  an  old  lady,  in  assuming  the  name  of  one  of  our 
Greatest  Families,  and  in  so  taking  advantage  of  the 
chivalry,  and  perhaps  the  devotion,  of  one's  superiors. 
The  offence  is  one  that  cannot  lightly  be  passed  over, 
and  the  culprit  will  surely  be  discovered. 

Of  the  success  of  the  College  at  hockey  and  in  the 
inter-University  draughts  competition,  I  am  as  proud 
as  yourselves.  \^Loud  cheers,lasting  for  several  minutes^ 
They  were  games  of  which  in  my  youth  I  was  myself 
I)roud.  On  the  river  I  see  no  reason  to  be  ashamed; 
next  term  we  have  the  Torpids,  and  after  that  the 
Eights.  We  have  no  cause  to  despair.  It  is  my  experi- 
ence (an  experience  based  on  ten  years  of  close  obser- 
vation), that  no  college  can  permanently  remain  at  the 
bottom  of  the  river.  There  is  a  tide  in  the  affairs  of 
men,  which  taken  at  the  flood  leads  on  to  fortune,  let 


REMARKS  ON  THE  END  OF  TERM   239 

us  therefore  take  heart  of  grace  and  screw  our  courage 
to  the  sticking  point.  We  have  the  lightest  cox.  in  the 
'Varsity  and  an  excellent  coach.  Much  may  be  done 
with  these  things. 

As  to  the  religious  state  of  the  college  it  Is,  as  you  all 
know,  excellent — I  wish  I  could  say  the  same  for  the 
Inorganic  Chemistry.  This  province  falls  under  the 
guidance  of  Mr.  Large,  but  the  deficiency  in  our  stand- 
ing is  entirely  the  fault  of  his  pupils.  There  are  not 
twenty  men  in  the  University  better  fitted  to  teach 
Inorganic  Chemistry  than  my  colleague.  At  any  rate 
it  is  a  very  grave  matter  and  one  by  which  a  college 
ultimately  stands  or  falls. 

We  have  had  no  deaths  to  deplore  during  this  term, 
and  in  my  opinion  the  attack  of  mumps  that  affected 
the  college  during  November  can  hardly  be  called  an 
epidemic.  The  drains  will  be  thoroughly  overhauled 
during  the  vacation,  and  the  expense  of  this,  spread  as 
it  will  be  among  all  undergraduate  members  whether  in 
residence  or  not,  will  form  a  very  trifling  addition  to 
Battells.     I  doubt  if  its  effect  will  be  felt. 

There  is  one  last  thing  that  I  shall  touch  upon.  We 
have  been  constantly  annoyed  by  the  way  in  which 
undergraduates  tread  down  the  lawn.  The  Oxford  turf 
is  one  of  the  best  signs  of  our  antiquity  as  a  university. 
There  is  no  turf  like  it  in  the  world.  The  habit  of 
continually  walking  upon  it  is  fatal  to  its  appearance. 
Such  an  action  would  certainly  never  be  permitted  in  a 
gentleman's  seat,  and  there  is  some  talk  of  building  a 
wall  round  the  quadrangle  to  prevent  the  practice  in 
question.  I  need  hardly  tell  you  what  a  disfigurement 
such  a  step  would  involve,  l)ut  if  there  is  one  thing  in 


240  LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

the  management  of  the  college  that  I  am  more  deter- 
mined upon  than  another  it  is  that  no  one,  be  he  scholar 
or  be  he  commoner,  shall  walk  upon  the  grass  ! 

I  wish  you  a  very  Merry  Christmas  at  the  various 
country  houses  you  may  be  visiting,  and  hope  and  pray 
that  you  may  find  united  there  all  the  members  of  your 
own  family. 

Mr.  Gurge  will  remain  behind  and  speak  to  me  for  a 
few  moments. 


XII 

LAMBKIN'S   ARTICLE   ON    THE   NORTH- 
WEST  CORNER    OF   THE    MOSAIC 
PAVEMENT   OF   THE   ROMAN 
VILLA   AT   BIGNOR 

Of  Mr.  Lambkin's  historical  research  little  mention  has 
been  made,  because  this  was  but  the  recreation  of  a 
mind  whose  serious  work  was  much  more  justly  calcu- 
lated to  impress  posterity.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that 
he  had  in  the  inner  coterie  of  Antiquarians,  a  very 
pronounced  reputation,  and  that  on  more  than  one 
occasion  his  discoveries  had  led  to  animated  dispute 
and  even  to  friction.  He  is  referred  to  as  "  Herr 
Professor  Lambkin"  in  Winsk's  "Roman  Sandals,"* 
and  Mr.  Bigchurch  in  the  Preface  of  his  exhaustive 
work  on  "The  Drainage  of  the  Grecian  Sea  Port" 
(which  includes  much  information  on  the  Ionian  colonies 
and  Magna  Graecia)  acknowledges  Mr.  Lambkin's 
"  valuable  sympathy  and  continuous  friendly  aid  which 
have  helped  him  through  many  a  dark  hour."  Lambkin 
was  also  frequently  sent  books  on  Greek  and  Roman 
Antiquities  to  review ;  and  it  must  be  presumed  that  the 
editor  of  Culture, \  who  was  himself  an  Oxford  man 

*  The  full  title  of  the  translation  is  "  The  Roman  Sandal  : 
Its  growth,  development  and  decay.  Its  influence  on  society 
and  its  position  in  the  liturgy  of  the  Western  Church." 

t  Nephew  of  Mr.  Child,  the  former  editor  ;  grandson  of 
Mr.  Pilgrim,  the  founder;  and  father  of  the  present  editor 
of  Culfjire. 

241  16 


242  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

and  had  taken  a  House  degree  in  1S62,  would  hardly 
have  had  such  work  done  by  an  ignorant  man. 

If  further  proof  were  needed  of  Mr.  Lambkin's  deep 
and  minute  scholarship  in  this  matter  it  would  be  dis- 
covered in  the  many  reproductions  of  antiquities  which 
used  to  hang  round  his  room  in  college.  They  were 
photographs  of  a  reddish-brown  colour  and  represented 
many  objects  dear  to  the  Scholar,  such  as  the  Parthenon, 
the  Temples  of  Paestum,  the  Apollo  Belvedere,  and  the 
Bronze  head  at  the  Vatican ;  called  in  its  original  dedica- 
tion an  Ariadne,  but  more  properly  described  by  M. 
Cremieux-Nathanson,  in  the  light  of  modern  research, 
as  a  Silenus, 

Any  doubts  as  to  Lambkin's  full  claim  to  detailed- 
knowledge  in  those  matters,  will,  however,  be  set  at 
rest  by  the  one  thing  he  has  left  us  of  the  kind — his 
article  in  the  Revue  Intelleciuelle,  which  was  translated 
for  him  by  a  Belgian  friend,  but  of  which  I  have 
preserved  the  original  MSS.*    It  is  as  follows  : 

THE    ARTICLE 

I  cannot  conceive  how  M.  Bischofft  and  Herr 
CrapiloniJ  can  have  fallen  into  their  grotesque  error 
with  regard  to  the  Head  in  the  Mosaic  at  Bignor.  The 
Head,  as  all  the  world  knows,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
extreme  north-west  corner  of  the  floor  of  the  Mosaic  at 
Bignor,  in  Sussex.  Its  exact  dimensions  from  the 
highest  point  of  the  crown  to  the  point  or  cusp  of  the 

*  Mr.    Cook   criticises   this   sentence.     It   is   a   point   upon 
v.hich  friends  may  "  agrier  a  differer.'''' 
t  Author  of  Psychologie  de  VAbsurde. 
X  Professor  of  Micro-graphy  at  Bonn. 


THE    ROMAN  VILLA   AT   BIGNOR       243 

chin,  and  from  the  furthest  back  edge  of  the  cerebellum 
to  the  outer  tip  of  the  nose  are  one  foot  five  inches  and 
one  foot  three  inches  respectively.  The  Head  is  thus 
of  the  Heroic  or  exaggerated  size,  and  not  (as  Wain- 
wright  says  in  his  Antiquities),  "of  life  size."  It 
represents  the  head  and  face  of  an  old  man,  and  is 
composed  of  fragments,  in  which  are  used  the  colours 
black,  brown,  blue,  yellow,  pink,  green,  purple,  and 
bright  orange.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  floor 
must  have  presented  a  very  beautiful  and  even  brilliant 
appearance  when  it  was  new,  but  at  the  present  day  it 
is  much  dulled  from  having  lain  buried  for  fifteen 
hundred  years. 

My  contention  is  that  M.  Bischoff  and  Herr  Crapiloni 
have  made  a  very  ridiculous  mistake  (I  will  not  call  it 
by  a  harsher  name)  in  representing  this  head  to  be  a 
figure  of  Winter.  In  one  case  (that  of  M.  Bischoff)  I 
have  no  doubt  that  patriotic  notions  were  too  strong  for 
a  well-balanced  judgment;*  but  in  the  other,  I  am  at  a 
loss  to  find  a  sufficient  basis  for  a  statement  which  is 
not  only  false,  but  calculated  to  do  a  grave  hurt  to 
history  and  even  to  public  morals.  M.  Bischoff  admits 
that  he  visited  England  in  company  with  Herr  Crapiloni 
— I  have  no  doubt  that  the  latter  influenced  the  former, 
and  that  the  blame  and  shame  of  this  matter  must  fall 
on  the  ultra-montane  German  and  not  on  the  philo- 
sophical but  enthusiastic  Gaul. 

For  my  opponents'  abuse  of  my-oelf  in  the  columns  of 
such  rags  as  the  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Historique  de 
Bourges,  or  the  Revue  d'Histoire  Romaine,  I  have  only 

*  This  was  rather  severe,  as  M.  Bischoff  had  spent  some 
years  in  a  Maison  de  Sante. 


244  LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

contempt  and  pity ;  but  we  in  England  are  taught  that 
a  lie  on  any  matter  is  equally  serious,  and  I  will  be  no 
party  to  the  calling  of  the  Mosaic  a  figure  of  "  Winter  " 
when  I  am  convinced  it  is  nothing  of  the  kind. 

As  far  as  I  can  make  out  from  their  somewhat 
turgid  rhetoric,  my  opponents  rely  upon  the  inscription 
"  Hiems  "  put  in  with  white  stones  beneath  the  mosaic, 
and  they  argue  that,  as  the  other  four  corners  are 
admitted  to  be  "Spring,"  "Summer,"  and  "Autumn," 
each  with  their  title  beneath,  therefore  this  fourth  corner 
must  be  Winter  ! 

It  is  just  such  an  argument  from  analogy  as  I  should 
have  expected  from  men  brought  up  in  the  corrupt 
morality  and  the  base  religious  conceptions  of  the 
Continent !  When  one  is  taught  that  authority  is  every- 
thing and  cannot  use  one's  judgment,*  one  is  almost 
certain  to  jump  at  conclusions  in  this  haphazard  fashion 
in  dealing  with  definite  facts. 

For  my  part  I  am  convinced  that  the  head  is  the 
portrait  of  the  Roman  proprietor  of  the  villa,  and  I  am 
equally  convinced  that  the  title  "Hiems"  has  been 
added  below  at  a  later  date,  so  as  to  furnish  a  trap  for 
all  self-sufficient  and  gullible  historians.  Are  my 
continental  critics  aware  that  no  single  cofy  of  the 
mosaic  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  of  the  Roman 
Remains  of  Britain?  Are  they  aware  the  villa  at 
Bignor  has  changed  hands  three  times  in  this  century? 
I  do  not  wish  to  make  any  insinuations  of  bad  faith, 
but  I  would  hint  that  the  word  "  Hiems"  has  a  fresh 
new  look  about  it  which  puzzles  me. 

*  An  example  of  these  occasional  difficulties  in  style,  due  to 
the  eagerness  of  which  I  have  spoken. 


THE    ROMAN  VILLA   AT  BIGNOR      245 

To  turn  to  another  matter,  though  it  is  one  connected 
with  our  subject.  The  pupil  of  the  eye  has  disappeared. 
We  know  that  the  loss  is  of  ancient  date,  as  Wright 
mentions  its  absence  in  his  catalogue.  A  very  inter- 
esting discussion  has  arisen  as  to  the  material  of  which 
the  pupil  was  composed.  The  matter  occupied  the 
Society  at  Dresden  (of  which  I  am  a  corresponding 
member)  in  a  debate  of  some  days,  I  have  therefore  tried 
to  fathom  it  but  with  only  partial  success.  I  have 
indeed  found  a  triangular  blue  fragment  which  is  much 
the  same  shape  as  the  missing  cavity  ;  it  is,  however, 
somewhat  larger  in  all  its  dimensions,  and  is  convex 
instead  of  flat,  and  I  am  assured  it  is  but  a  piece  of 
blue  china  of  recent  manufacture,  of  which  many  such 
odds  and  ends  are  to  be  found  in  the  fields  and  dustbins. 
If  (as  I  strongly  suspect)  these  suggestions  are  only  a 
ruse,  and  if  (as  I  hope  will  be  the  case)  my  fragment, 
after  some  filing  and  chipping,  can  be  made  to  fit  the 
cavity,  the  discovery  will  be  of  immense  value;  for  it 
will  show  that  the  owner  of  the  villa  was  a  Teuton  and 
will  go  far  to  prove  the  theory  of  Roman  continuity, 
which  is  at  present  based  on  such  slight  evidence.  I 
will  let  you  know  the  result. 

The  coins  recently  dug  up  in  the  neighbourhood,  and 
on  which  so  many  hopes  were  based,  prove  nothing  as 
to  the  date  of  the  mosaic.  They  cannot  be  of  Roman 
origin,  for  they  bear  for  the  most  part  the  head  and 
inscription  of  William  III.,  while  the  rest  are  pence 
and  shillings  of  the  Georges.  One  coin  was  a  guinea, 
and  will,  I  fear,  be  sold  as  gold  to  the  bank.  I  was 
very  disappointed  to  find  so  poor  a  result  :  ever  since 
my  inquiry  labourers  have  kept  coming  to  me  with  coins 


246  LAMBKTN'S   REMAINS 

obviously  modern — especially  bronze  coins  of  Napoleon 
III. — which  they  have  buried  to  turn  them  green,  and 
subsequently  hammered  shapeless  in  the  hopes  of  my 
purchasing  them.  I  have  had  the  misfortune  to  pur- 
chase, for  no  less  a  sum  than  a  sovereign,  what  turned 
out  to  be  the  circular  brass  label  on  a  dog's  collar.  It 
contained  the  name  of  "  Ponto,"  inscribed  in  a  classic 
wreath  which  deceived  me. 

Nothing  else  of  real  importance  has  occurred  since  my 
last  communication. 


XIII 

LAMBKIN'S  SERMON 

A  MAN  not  over-given  to  mere  words,  Lambkin  was 
always  also  somewhat  diffident  of  his  pulpit  eloquence 
and  his  sermons  were  therefore  rare.  It  must  not  be 
imagined  that  he  w-as  one  of  those  who  rebel  vainly 
against  established  usage.  There  was  nothing  in  him 
of  the  blatant  and  destructive  demagogue ;  no  character 
could  have  been  more  removed  from  the  demons  who 
drenched  the  fair  soil  of  France  with  such  torrents  of 
blood  during  the  awful  reign  of  terror. 

But  just  as  he  was  in  politics  a  liberal  in  the  truest 
sense  (not  in  the  narrow  party  definition  of  the  word), 
so  in  the  religious  sphere  he  descried  the  necessity  of 
gentle  but  persistent  reform.  "  The  present,"  he  would 
often  say,  "  is  inseparable  from  the  past,"  but  he  would 
add  "continual  modification  to  suit  the  necessities 
of  a  changing  environment  is  a  cardinal  condition  of 
vitality." 

It  was,  therefore,  his  aim  to  keep  the  form  of  all 
existing  institutions  and  merely  to  change  their  matter. 

Thus,  he  was  in  favour  of  the  retention  of  the  Regius 
Professorship  of  Greek,  and  even  voted  for  a  heavy 
increase  in  the  salary  of  its  occupant ;  but  he  urged  and 
finally  carried  the  amendment  by  which  that  dignitary 
is   at   present   compelled   to   lecture  mainly   on  current 

247 


248  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

politics.  Mathematics  again  was  a  subject  whose 
interest  he  discerned,  however  much  he  doubted  its 
value  as  a  mental  discipline ;  he  was,  therefore,  a 
supporter  of  the  prize  fellowships  occasionally  offered 
on  the  subject,  but,  in  the  determination  of  the  success- 
ful candidate  he  would  give  due  weight  to  the  minutiae 
of  dress  and  good  manners. 

It  will  be  seen  from  all  this  that  if  Lambkin  was 
essentially  a  modern,  yet  he  was  as  essentially  a  wise 
and  moderate  man;  cautious  in  action  and  preferring 
judgment  to  violence  he  would  often  say,  "  transioTmer 
please,  not  reformer,"  when  his  friends  twitted  him 
over  the  port  with  his  innovations.* 

Religion,  then,  which  must  be  a  matter  of  grave 
import  to  all,  was  not  neglected  by  such  a  mind. 

He  saw  that  all  was  not  lost  when  dogma  failed,  but 
that  the  great  ethical  side  of  the  system  could  be 
developed  in  the  room  left  by  the  decay  of  its  formal 
character.  Just  as  a  man  who  has  lost  his  fingers  will 
sometimes  grow  thumbs  in  their  place,  so  Lambkin 
foresaw  that  in  the  place  of  what  was  an  atrophied 
function,  vigorous  examples  of  an  older  type  might 
shoot  up,  and  the  organism  would  gain  in  breadth  what 
it  lost  in  definition.  "  I  look  forward  to  the  time  "  (he 
would  cry)  "  when  the  devotional  hand  of  man  shall  be 
all  thumbs." 

The  philosophy  which  he  thus  applied  to  formal 
teaching  and  dogma  took  practical  effect  in  the  no  less 

*  The  meaning  of  this  sentence  is  made  clear  thus  :  They 
(subject)  twitted  (predicate),  with-his-qualifications  (adver- 
bially "how"),  over — the — port  (adverbially  "where  and 
when  "),  him  (object). 


LAMBKIN'S   SERMON  249 

important  matter  of  the  sermon.  He  retained  that  form 
or  shell,  but  he  raised  it  as  on  stepping  stones  from  its 
dead  self  to  higher  things ;  the  success  of  many  a  man 
in  this  life  has  been  due  to  the  influence  exerted  by  his 
simple  words. 

The  particular  allocution  which  I  have  chosen  as  the 
best  illustration  of  his  method  was  not  preached  in  the 
College  Chapel,  but  was  on  the  contrary  a  University 
Sermon  given  during  eight  weeks.     It  ran  as  follows  : 


SERMON 

I  take  for  my  text  a  beautiful  but  little-known 
passage  from  the  Talmud  : 

"  /  will  arise  and  gird  up  my  lions — /  mean  loins — 
and  go ;  yea,  I  will  get  me  out  of  the  land  of  my  fathers 
which  is  in  Ben-ramon,  even  unto  Edom  and  the  V alley 
of  Kush  and  the  cities  about  Laban  to  the  uttermost  ends 
of  the  earthy 

There  is  something  about  foreign  travel,  my  dear 
Brethren,  which  seems,  as  it  were,  a  positive  physical 
necessity  to  our  eager  and  high-wrought  generation.  At 
specified  times  of  the  year  we  hunt,  or  debate;  we 
attend  to  our  affairs  in  the  city,  or  we  occupy  our  minds 
with  the  guidance  of  State.  The  ball-room,  the  draw- 
ing-room, the  club,  each  have  their  proper  season.  In 
our  games  football  gives  place  to  cricket,  and  the  deep 
bay  of  the  faithful  hound  yields  with  the  advancing 
season  to  the  sharp  crack  of  the  Winchester,  as  the 
grouse,   the  partridge,   or  the  sery  kapper-capercailzie 


250  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

itself  falls  before  the  superior  intelligence  of  man.  One 
fashion  also  will  succeed  another,  and  in  the  mysterious 
development  of  the  years — a  development  not  entirely 
under  the  guidance  of  our  human  wills — the  decent 
croquet-ball  returns  to  lawns  that  had  for  so  long  been 
strangers  to  aught  but  the  fierce  agility  of  tennis. 

So  in  the  great  procession  of  the  times  and  the 
seasons,  there  comes  upon  us  the  time  for  travel.  It  is 
not  (my  dear  Brethren),  it  is  not  in  the  winter  when  all 
is  covered  with  a  white  veil  of  snow — or  possibly  trans- 
formed with  the  marvellous  effects  of  thaw ;  it  is  not  in 
the  spring  when  the  buds  begin  to  appear  in  the  hedges, 
and  when  the  crocus  studs  the  spacious  sward  in  artful 
disorder  and  calculated  negligence — no  it  is  not  then — 
the  old  time  of  Pilgrimage,*  that  our  positive  and 
enlightened  era  chooses  for  its  migration.! 

It  is  in  the  burning  summer  season,  when  the  glare 
of  the  sun  is  almost  painful  to  the  jaded  eye  of  the 
dancer,  when  the  night  is  shortest  and  the  day  longest, 
that  we  fly  from  the.se  inhospitable  shores  and  green 
fields  of  England. 

And  whither  do  we  fly  ?  Is  it  to  the  cool  and  delicious 
north,  to  the  glaciers  of  Greenland,  or  to  the  noble  cliffs 
and  sterling  characters  of  Orkney  ?  Is  it  to  Norway  ? 
Can  it  be  to  Lapland  ?  Some  perhaps,  a  very  few,  are 
to  be  found  journeying  to  these  places  in  the  commo- 
dious and  well-appointed  green  boats  of  Mr.  Wilson,  of 
Tranby  Croft.     But,  alas  !  the  greater  number  leave  the 

*  Mr.  Lambkin  loved  to  pass  a  quiet  hour  over  the  MSS.  in 
the  Bodleian,  and  would  quote  familiarly  the  rare  lines  of 
Chaucer,  especially,  among  the  mediaeval  poets. 

t  This  sentence  is  an  admirable  example  of  Lambkin's  later 
manner. 


LAMBKIN'S   SERMON  251 

hot  summer  of  England  for  the  yet  more  torrid  climes 
of  Italy,  Spain,  the  Levant,  and  the  Barbary  coast. 
Negligent  of  the  health  that  is  our  chiefest  treasure,  we 
waste  our  energies  in  the  malaria  of  Rome,  or  in  Paris 
poison  our  minds  with  the  contempt  aroused  by  the 
sight  of  hideous  foreigners. 

Let  me  turn  from  this  painful  aspect  of  a  question 
which  certainly  presents  nobler  and  more  useful  issues. 
It  is  most  to  our  purpose,  perhaps,  in  a  certain  fashion ; 
it  is  doubtless  more  to  our  purpose  in  many  ways  to 
consider  on  an  occasion  such  as  this  the  moral  aspects 
of  foreign  travel,  and  chief  among  these  I  reckon  those 
little  points  of  mere  every  day  practice,  which  are  of  so 
much  greater  importance  than  the  rare  and  exaggerated 
acts  to  which  our  rude  ancestors  gave  the  name  of  Sins. 

Consider  the  over-charges  in  hotels.  The  economist 
may  explain,  the  utilitarian  may  condone  such  action, 
but  if  we  are  to  make  for  Righteousness,  we  cannot  pass 
without  censure  a  practice  which  we  would  hardly  go  so 
far  as  to  condemn.  If  there  be  in  the  sacred  edifice  any 
one  of  those  who  keep  houses  of  entertainment  upon  the 
Continent,  especially  if  there  sit  among  you  any  repre- 
sentative of  that  class  in  Switzerland,  I  would  beg  him 
to  consider  deeply  a  matter  which  the  fanatical  clergy 
of  his  land  may  pardon,  but  which  it  is  the  duty  of  ours 
to  publicly  deplore. 

Consider  again  the  many  examples  of  social  and 
moral  degradation  which  we  meet  with  in  our  journey- 
ings  !  We  pass  from  the  coarse  German  to  the  in- 
constant Gaul.  We  fly  the  indifference  and  ribald 
scoffing  of  Milan  only  to  fall  into  the  sink  of  idolatry 
and  superstition  which  men  call  Naples ;  we  observe  in 


252  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

our  rapid  flight  the  indolent  Spaniard,  the  disgusting 
Slav,  the  uncouth  Frisian,  and  the  frightful  Hun. 
Our  travels  will  not  be  without  profit  if  they  teach  us 
to  thank  Heaven  that  our  fathers  preserved  us  from 
such  a  lot  as  theirs. 

Again,  we  may  consider  the  great  advantages  that  we 
may  gather  as  individuals  from  travel.  We  can  exercise 
our  financial  ingenuity  (and  this  is  no  light  part  of 
mental  training)  in  arranging  our  expenses  for  the  day. 
We  can  find  in  the  corners  of  foreign  cities  those  relics 
of  the  Past  which  the  callous  and  degraded  people  of  the 
place  ignore,  and  which  are  reserved  for  the  apprecia- 
tion of  a  more  vigorous  race.  In  the  galleries  we  learn 
the  beauties  of  a  San  Mirtanoja,  and  the  vulgar  insuf- 
ficiency and  ostentation  of  a  Sanzio.*  In  a  thousand 
ways  the  experience  of  the  Continent  is  a  consolation 
and  a  support. 

Fourthly,  my  dear  Brethren,  we  contrast  our  sturdy 
and  honest  crowd  of  tourists  with  the  ridiculous  castes 
and  social  pettiness  of  the  ruck  of  foreign  nations. 
There  the  peasant,  the  bourgeois,  the  noble,  the  priest, 
the  politician,  the  soldier,  seems  each  to  live  in  his  own 
world.  In  our  happier  England  there  are  but  two 
classes,  the  owners  of  machinery  and  the  owners  of 
land ;  and  these  are  so  subtly  and  happily  mixed,  there 
is  present  at  the  same  time  so  hearty  an  independence 
and  so  sensible  a  recognition  of  rank,  that  the  whole 
vast  mass  of  squires  and  merchants  mingle  in  an  ex- 
quisite harmony,  and  pour  like  a  life-giving  flood  over 
the  decaying  cities  of  Europe. 

But  I  have  said  enough.     I  must  draw  to  a  close. 
*  Raphael. 


LAMBKIN'S   SERMON  253 

The  love  of  fame,  which  has  been  beautifully  called  the 
last  infirmity  of  noble-minds,  alone  would  tempt  me  to 
proceed.  But  I  must  end.  I  hope  that  those  of  you 
who  go  to  Spain  will  visit  the  unique  and  interesting  old 
town  of  Saragossa. 

{Here  Mr.  Lambkin  abruptly  left  the  pulpit.) 


XIV 

LAMBKIN'S  OPEN  LETTER  TO 
CHURCHMEN 

The  noise  made  by  Mr.  Lambkin's  famous  advice  to 
Archdeacon  Burfle  will  be  remembered  by  all  my 
readers.  He  did  not,  however,  publish  the  letter  (as 
is  erroneously  presumed  in  Great  Dead  Men  of  the 
Period)  *  without  due  discussion  and  reflection.  I  did 
not  personally  urge  him  to  make  it  public — I  thought 
it  unwise.  But  Mr.  Large  may  almost  be  said  to  have 
insisted  upon  it  in  the  long  Conversation  which  he  and 
Josiah  had  upon  the  matter.  When  Lambkin  had  left 
Large's  room  I  took  the  liberty  of  going  up  to  see  him 
again,  but  the  fatal  missive  had  been  posted,  and 
appeared  next  day  in  The  Times,  the  Echo,  and  other 
journals,  not  to  mention  the  Englishman's  Anchor.  I 
do  not  wish  to  accuse  Mr.  Large  of  any  malicious 
purpose  or  deliberately  misleading  intention,  but  I  fear 
that  (as  he  was  not  an  impulsive  man)  his  advice  can 
only  have  proceeded  from  a  woeful  and  calculated  lack 
of  judgment. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  (from  Lambkin's  own  point  of 

*  !'•  347'  "  The  impetuosity  of  the  action  ill-suits  with  what 
is  known  of  Lambkin."  It  is  all  very  well  for  the  editor  of 
Great  Dead  Men  to  say  that  this  apologises  for  the  misfortune-, 
that  apology  does  not  excuse  the  imputation  of  impetuosity 
(forsooth  !)  to  a  man  whose  every  gesture  was  restrained. 

254 


OPEN   LETTER  TO  CHURCHMEN      255 

view),  the  publication  of  tliis  letter  was  a  very  serioub 
error.  It  bitterly  offended  Arthur  Bundleton,  and 
alienated  all  the  "  Pimlico  "  group  (as  they  were  then 
called).  At  the  same  time  it  did  not  satisfy  the  small 
but  eager  and  cultured  body  who  followed  Tamworthy. 
It  gave  a  moderate  pleasure  to  the  poorer  clergy  in  the 
country  parishes,  but  I  doubt  very  much  whether  these 
are  the  men  from  whom  social  advantage  or  eccle- 
siastical preferment  is  to  be  expected.  I  often  told 
Lambkin  that  the  complexity  of  our  English  Polity  was 
a  dangerous  thing  to  meddle  with.  "  A  man,"  I  would 
say  to  him,  "  who  expresses  an  opinion  is  like  one  who 
plunges  a  knife  into  some  sensitive  part  of  the  human 
frame.  The  former  may  offend  unwittingly  by  the  mere 
impact  of  his  creed  or  prejudice,  much  as  the  latter  may 
give  pain  by  happening  upon  some  hidden  nerve." 

Now  Lambkin  was  essentially  a  wise  man.  He  felt 
the  obligation — the  duty  (to  give  it  a  nobler  name) — 
which  is  imposed  on  all  of  us  of  studying  our  fellows. 
He  did  not,  perhaps,  say  where  his  mind  lay  in  any 
matter  more  than  half  a  dozen  times  in  his  life,  for  fear 
of  opposing  by  such  an  expression  the  wider  experience 
or  keener  emotion  of  the  society  around  him.  He  felt 
himself  a  part  of  a  great  stream,  which  it  was  the 
business  of  a  just  man  to  follow,  and  if  he  spoke 
strongly  (as  he  often  did)  it  was  on  some  matter  upon 
which  the  vast  bulk  of  his  countrymen  were  agreed ; 
indeed  he  rightly  gave  to  public  opinion,  and  to  the 
governing  classes  of  the  nation,  an  overwhelming  weight; 
in  his  system  of  morals ;  and  even  at  twenty-one  he  had 
a  wholesome  contempt  for  the  doctrinaire  enthusiast  who 
neglects  his  newspaper  and  hatches  an  ethical  system 


256  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

out  of  mere  blind  tradition  or  (what  is  worse)  his  inner 
conscience. 

It  is  remarkable,  therefore,  that  such  a  man  should 
have  been  guilty  of  one  such  error.  "  It  was  not  a 
crime,"  he  said  cleverly,  in  speaking  of  the  matter  to 
me,  "it  was  worse;  it  was  a  blunder."  And  that  is 
what  we  all  felt.  The  matter  can  be  explained,  how- 
ever, by  a  reference  to  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the 
moment  in  which  it  appeared.  The  Deanery  of  Bury 
had  just  fallen  vacant  by  the  death  of  Henry  Carver, 
the  elder.*  A  Liberal  Unionist  Government  was  in 
power,  and  Lambkin  perhaps  imagined  that  controversy 
still  led — as  it  had  done  but  a  few  years  before — to  the 
public  notice  which  it  merits.  He  erred,  but  it  was  a 
noble  error. 

One  thing  at  least  we  can  rejoice  in,  the  letter  may 
have  hurt  Lambkin  in  this  poor  mortal  life;  but  it  was 
of  incalculable  advantage  to  the  generation  immediately 
succeeding  his  own.  I  cannot  but  believe  that  from  that 
little  source  springs  all  the  mighty  river  of  reform  which 
has  left  so  profound  a  mark  upon  the  hosiery  of  this 
our  day. 

The  letter  is  as  follows  : 

AN  OPEN  LETTER 

BURFORD, 
My  dear  BurFLE,  St.  John's  Eve,  1876. 

You  have  asked  my  advice  on  a  matter  of  deep 
import,    a    matter    upon    which    every    self-respecting 

*  Better  known  perhaps  as  an  author  than  as  a  cleric.  He 
met  his  end  in  a  shocking  manner  in  a  railway  accident.  His 
life  was,  however,  insured,  and  he  had  upon  him  a  copy  of 
Golden  Deeds. 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  CHURCHMEN      257 

Englishman  is  asking  himself  the  question,  "Am  I  a 
shce-p  or  a  goatV^  My  dear  Burfle,  I  will  answer  you 
straight  out,  and  I  know  you  will  not  be  angry  with  me 
if  I  answer  also  in  the  agora,  "before  the  people,"  as 
Paul  would  have  done.  Are  you  a  sheep  or  a  goat? 
Let  us  think. 

You  say  rightly  that  the  question  upon  which  all  this 
turns  is  the  question  of  boots.  It  is  but  a  symbol,  but 
it  is  a  symbol  upon  which  all  England  is  divided.  On 
the  one  hand  we  have  men  strenuous,  determined,  eager 
— men  (if  I  may  say  so)  of  true  Apostolic  quality,  to 
whom  the  buttoned  boot  is  sacred  to  a  degree  some  of  us 
may  find  it  difficult  to  understand.  They  are  few,  are 
these  devout  pioneers,  but  they  are  in  certain  ways,  and 
from  some  points  of  view,  among  the  elite  of  the  Nation, 
so  to  speak. 

On  the  other  hand  we  have  the  great  mass  of  sensible 
men,  earnest,  devout,  practical — what  Beeker  calls  in  a 
fine  phrase  "  Thys  corpse  and  verie  bodieof  England  "* 
— determined  to  maintain  what  their  fathers  had  before 
them,  and  insisting  on  the  laced  boot  as  the  proper 
foot-gear  of  the  Church. 

No  one  is  more  sensible  than  myself  (my  dear  Burfle), 
1  say  no  one  is  more  sensible  than  I  am,  of  the  gravity 
of  this  schism — for  schism  it  threatens  to  be.  And  no 
one  appreciates  more  than  I  do  how  much  there  is  to  be 
said  on  both  sides.  The  one  party  will  urge  (with 
perfect  justice),  that  the  buttoned  boot  is  a  development. 
They  maintain  (and  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  their 
favour),  that  the  common  practice  of  wearing  buttoned 

*  Beeker's   A    Torch    for   ike    Chafell;    or  the   Nonconform 
mists  out-done.     Folio.  1663,  p.  71. 

17 


258  LAMBKIN'S    REMAINS 

boots,  their  ornate  appearance,  and  the  indication  of 
well-being  which  they  afford,  fit  them  most  especially 
for  the  Service  of  the  Temple.  They  are  seen  upon  the 
feet  of  Parisians,  of  Romans,  of  Viennese;  they  are 
associated  with  our  modern  occasions  of  Full  Dress,  and 
when  we  wear  them  we  feel  that  we  are  one  with  all 
that  is  of  ours  in  Christendom.  In  a  word,  they  are 
Catholic,  in  the  best  and  truest  sense  of  the  word. 

Now,  my  dear  Burfle,  consider  the  other  side  of  the 
argument.  The  laced  boot,  modern  though  it  be  in 
form  and  black  and  solid,  is  yet  most  undoubtedly  the 
Primitive  Boot  in  its  essential.  That  the  early  Chris- 
tians wore  sandals  is  now  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt  or 
the  power  of  the  wicked.  There  is  indeed  the  famous 
forgery  of  Gelasius,  which  may  have  imposed  upon  the 
superstition  of  the  dark  ages,*  there  is  the  doubtful 
evidence  also  of  the  mosaic  at  Ravenna.  But  the  only 
solid  ground  ever  brought  forward  was  the  passage  in 
the  Pseudo-Johannes,  which  no  modern  scholar  will 
admit  to  refer  to  buttons,  ^vyoi'  means,  among  other 
things,  a  lace,  an  absolute  lace,  and  I  defy  our  enemies 
(who  are  many  and  unscrupulous)  to  deny.  The  Sandal 
has  been  finally  given  its  place  as  a  Primitive  Christian 
ornament ;  and  we  can  crush  the  machinations  of  foreign 
missions,  I  think,  with  the  plain  sentence  of  that  great 
scholar.  Dr.  Junker.  "  The  sandal,"  he  says,  "  is  the 
parent  of  the  laced  boot." 

So  far  then,  so  good.  You  see  (my  dear  Burfle),  how 
honestly  the  two  sides  may  differ,  and  how,  with  such  a 
backing   upon   either   side,    the   battle   might   rage   in- 

*  Referring  to  the  edict  on  Buttoned  Boots  of  Romulus 
Augustulus  :  a  very  shameless  injustice. 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  CHURCHMEN      259 

definitely,    to    the    final    extinction,    perhaps,    of    our 
beloved  country  and  its  most  cherished  institutions. 

Is  there  no  way  by  which  such  a  catastrophe  may  be 
avoided  ? 

Why  most  certainly  yes.  There  is  a  road  on  which 
both  may  travel,  a  place  in  which  all  may  meet.  I 
mean  the  boot  (preferably  the  cloth  boot)  with  elastic 
sides.  Already  it  is  worn  by  many  of  our  clergy.*  It 
offends  neither  party,  it  satisfies,  or  should  satisfy, 
both;  and  for  my  part,  I  see  in  it  one  of  those  com- 
promises upon  which  our  greatness  is  founded.  Let  us 
then  determine  to  be  in  this  matter  neither  sheep  nor 
goafs.  It  is  better,  far  better,  to  admit  some  sheepish- 
ness  into  our  goatishness,  or  (if  our  extremists  mill  have 
it  so),  some  goatishness  into  our  sheepishness — it  is 
better,  I  say,  to  enter  one  fold  and  be  at  peace  together, 
than  to  imperil  our  most  cherished  and  beloved  tenets 
in  a  mere  wrangle  upon  non-essentials.  For,  after  all, 
what  is  essential  to  us  ?  Not  boots,  I  think,  but  righteous- 
ness. Righteousness  may  express  itself  in  boots,  it  is 
just  and  good  that  it  should  do  so,  but  to  see  righteous- 
ness in  the  boot  itself  is  to  fall  into  the  gross  materialism 
of  the  middle  ages,  and  to  forget  our  birthright  and  the 
mess  of  pottage. 

Yours  (my  dear  Burfle)  in  all  charity, 

JosiAH  Lambkin. 

*  Lambkin  lived  to  see  its  almost  universal  adoption  :  a 
result  in  which  he  was  no  mean  agent. 


XV 

LAMBKIN'S  LETTER  TO  A  FRENCH 
FRIEND 

Lambkin's  concern  for  the  Continent  was  deep  and 
lasting.  He  knew  the  Western  part  of  this  Division  of 
the  Globe  from  a  constant  habit  of  travel  which  would 
take  him  by  the  Calais-Bale,  passing  through  the  St. 
Gothard  by  night,  and  so  into  the  storied  plains  of 
Italy. '^  It  was  at  Milan  that  he  wrote  his  Shcrtcr 
Anglo-Saxon  Granitnar,  and  in  Assisi  that  he  corrected 
the  proofs  of  his  article  on  the  value  of  oats  as  human 
food.  Everyone  will  remember  the  abominable  outrage 
at  Naples,  where  he  was  stabbed  by  a  coachman  in 
revenge  for  his  noble  and  disinterested  protection  of  a 
poor  cab-horse ;  in  a  word,  Italy  is  full  of  his  vacations, 
and  no  name  is  more  familiar  to  the  members  of  the 
Club  at  the  Villa  Marinoni. 

It  may  seem  strange  that  under  such  circumstances 
our  unhappy  neighbours  across  the  Channel  should  so 
especially  have  taken  up  his  public  action.  He  was  no 
deep  student  of  the  French  tongue,  and  he  had  but  a 
trifling  acquaintance  with  the  habits  of  the  common 
people  of  that  country  ;  but  he  has  said  himself  with 
great  fervour,   in  his  "  Thoughts  on  Political  Obliga- 

*  "On  fair  Italia's  storied  plains,"  Biggin,  xii.,  /.  32. 
260 


LETTER  TO  A  FRENCH   FRIEND      261 

tions,"  that  no  man  could  be  a  good  citizen  of  England 
who  did  not  understand  her  international  position. 
"  What  "  (he  would  frequently  exclaim)  "  what  can  they 
know  of  England,  who  only  England  know?"*  He 
did  not  pretend  to  a  familiarity  with  the  minute  details 
of  foreign  policy,  nor  was  he  such  a  pedant  as  to  be 
offended  at  the  good-humoured  chaff  directed  against 
his  accent  in  the  pronunciation  of  foreign  names. 
Nevertheless  he  thought  it — and  rightly  thought  it — 
part  of  his  duty  to  bring  into  any  discussion  of  the 
affairs  of  the  Republic  those  chance  phrases  which  lend 
colour  and  body  to  a  conversation.  He  found  this  duty 
as  it  lay  in  his  path  and  accomplished  it,  without 
bombast,  but  with  full  determination,  and  with  a  vast 
firmness  of  purpose.  Thus  he  would  often  let  drop 
such  expressions  as  "  etat  majeur,"  "la  clericalisme 
c'est  I'ennemi,"  "  I'etat  c'est  moi,"t  and  such  was  his 
painful  and  exact  research  that  he  first  in  the  University 
arrived  at  the  meaning  of  the  word  "bordereau,"  which, 
until  his  discovery,  all  had  imagined  to  be  a  secret 
material  of  peculiar  complexity. 

Mr.  Lambkin  had  but  one  close  friend  in  France,  a 
man  who  had  from  cosmopolitan  experience  acquired  a 
breadth  and  humour  which  the  Frenchman  so  conspicu- 
ously lacks;  he  united,  therefore,  the  charm  of  the 
French  character  to  that  general  experience  which 
Lambkin  invariably  demanded  of  his  friends,  and  the 
fact  that  he  l^elonged  to  a  small  political  minority  and 

*  I  ani  assured  by  Mr.  Venial  that  this  well-knowa  line 
originally  took  shape  on  Mr.  Lambkin's  lips. 

t  This  phrase  he  noticed  early  in  his  studies  to  be  a  rhym- 
ing catchword,  and  pronounced  it  so  to  the  day  of  his  death. 


262  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

had  so  long  associated  with  foreigners  had  winnowed 
from  that  fine  soul  the  grossness  and  one-sidedness,  the 
mingled  vanity  and  ferocity,  which  seems  so  fatal  a  part 
of  the  Gallic  temper.  In  some  ways  this  friend  re- 
minded one  of  the  great  Huguenots  whom  France  to  her 
eternal  loss  banished  by  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes,  and  of  whom  a  bare  twenty  thousand  are  now 
to  be  found  in  the  town  of  Nimes.  In  other  ways  this 
gifted  mind  recalled — and  this  would  be  in  his  moments 
of  just  indignation — the  manner  and  appearance  of  a 
Major  Prophet. 

Jules  de  la  Vaguere  de  Bissac  was  the  first  of  his 
family  to  bear  that  ancient  name,  but  not  the  least 
worthy.  Born  on  a  Transatlantic  in  the  port  of  Ham- 
burg, his  first  experience  of  life  had  been  given  him  in 
the  busy  competition  of  New  York.  It  was  there  that 
he  acquired  the  rapid  glance,  the  grasp,  the  hard 
business  head  which  carried  him  from  Buenos  Ayres  to 
Amsterdam,  and  finally  to  a  fortune.  His  wealth  he 
spent  in  the  entertainment  of  his  numerous  friends,  in 
the  furtherance  of  just  aims  in  politics  (to  which  alas  ! 
the  rich  in  France  do  not  subscribe  as  they  should),  to 
the  publication  of  sound  views  in  the  press,  and  occa- 
sionally (for  old  habit  is  second  nature*),  in  the  promo- 
tion of  some  industrial  concern  destined  to  benefit  his 
country  and  the  world,  t  With  transactions,  however 
sound  and  honest,  that  savoured  of  mere  speculation 
De  Bissac  would  have  nothing  to  do,  and  when  his 
uncle  and  brother  fled  the  country  in  1887,  he  helped, 

*  Hobbes. 

t  Thus    M.    de   Bissac    was   the   President  of    the   Scciete 
Anonyme  des  Voi lures-fixes. 


LETTER  TO  A   FRENCH    FRIEND       263 

indeed,  with  his  purse  but  he  Avas  never  heard  to  excuse 
or  even  to  mention  the  poor,  fallen  men. 

His  hotel  in  the  Rue  des  Fortifications  (a  modest  but 
coquettish  little  gem,  whose  doors  were  bronze  copies  of 
the  famous  gates  of  the  Baptistery  at  Florence),  had 
often  received  Mr.  Lambkin  and  a  happy  circle  of 
friends.  Judge  then  of  the  horror  and  indignation  with 
which  Oxford  heard  that  two  of  its  l:>eautiful  windows 
had  been  intentionally  broken  on  the  night  of  June  15th, 
1896.  The  famous  figure  of  "  Mercy,"  taken  from  the 
stained  glass  at  Rheims,  was  destroyed  and  one  of  the 
stones  had  fallen  on  the  floor  within  an  inch  of  a  price- 
less Sevres  vase  that  had  once  belonged  to  Law  and  had 
been  bought  from  M.  Panama.  It  was  on  the  occasion 
of  this  abominable  outrage  that  Mr.  Lambkin  sent  the 
following  letter,  which,  as  it  was  published  in  the 
Horreur,  I  make  no  scruple  of  reprinting.  But,  for  the 
sake  of  the  historical  interest  it  pos-sesses,  I  give  it  in 
its  original  form  : 

Cher  Ami  et  Monsieur, 

Je  n'ai  pas  de  doute  que  vous  aurez  souvenu 
votre  visite  a  Oxford,  car  je  suis  bien  sur  que  je 
souviens  ma  visite  a  Paris,  quand  je  fus  recu  avec  tant 
de  bienveillance  par  vous  et  votre  aimable  famille. 

Vous  aurez  done  immediatement  apres  I'accident  pense 
a  nous  car  vous  aurez  su  que  nous  etions,  moi  et  Bilkin, 
vos  amis  sinceres  surtout  dans  la  politique.  Nous  avons 
expecte  quelque  chose  pareille  et  nous  comprenons  bien 
pourquoi  c'est  le  mauvais  Durand  qui  a  jete  les  pierres. 
Vous  avez  ete  trop  bon  pour  cet  homme  la.  Souvenez- 
vous  en   future   que  c'est  exactement  ceux  a  qui  nous 


264  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

pretons  de  I'argent  et  devraient  etre  d^voues  a  nous,  qui 
deviennent  des  ennemis.  Voila  ce  qui  empeche  si 
souvent  de  faire  du  bien  excepte  a  ceux  qui  nous  seront 
fideles  et  doux. 

{All  this,  being  of  a  private  nature,  was  not  printed 
in  M .  de  Bissac^s  paper.     The  public  portion  follows.) 

II  est  bien  evident  d'oii  viennent  des  abominables  et 
choquants  choses  pareilles.  C'est  que  la  France  se 
meurent.  Un  pays  ou  il  n'y  a  personne*  qui  pent 
empecher  des  fanatiques  de  briser  les  verres  est  un  pays 
en  decadence,  voila  ce  que  I'lrlande  aurait  ete  si  nous 
etions  pas  la  pour  1 'empecher.  On  briserait  des  verres 
tres  surement  et  beaucoup.  J'espere  que  je  ne  blesse 
pas  votre  coeur  de  Fran9ais  en  disant  tout  cela,  mais  il 
est  bien  mieux  de  connaitre  ce  que  Ton  a,  meme  si  c'est 
mortel  comme  en  France. 

Vous  I'avez  bien  dit  c'est  les  militarismeetclericalisme 
qui  font  ces  outrages.  Examinez  bien  I'homme  qui  a 
fait  ga  et  vous  verrez  qu'il  a  ete  baptise  et  tres  probable- 
ment  il  a  fait  son  service  militaire.  Oh  !  Mon  cher 
ami  que  Dieuf  vous  a  merveilleusement  preserve  de 
I'influence  du  Sabe  et  du  Goupillon  !  Vous  n'avez  pas 
fait  votre  service  et  si  vous  etes  sage  ne  faites  le  jamais 
car  il  corrompt  le  caract^re.     Je  nous  ne  I'avons  pas. 

J'ai  lu  avec  grand  plaisir  votre  article  "  Le  Pretre 
au  Bagne,"  oui !  c'est  au  Bagne  que'l  on  devrait  envoyer 
les  Pretres  seulement  dans  un  pays  ou  tant  de  personne 
sont  Catholiques,  je  crains  que  les  jurys  sentimentales  de 
votre  pays  aquitterait  honteusement  ces  hommes  nefastes. 

*  "  Accuracy  in  the  use  of  negatives,"  Mr.  Lambkin  would 
say,  "  is  the  test  of  a  scholar." 

f  Changed  to  "  le  Destin  "  in  the  newspaper. 


LETTER  TO  A  FRENCH   FRIEND      265 

J'espere  que  je  ne  blesse  pas  votre  Cceur  de  Catho- 
lique  en  disant  cela.  *  Nos  Catholiques  ici  ne  sont  pas 
si  mauvais  que  nos  Catholiques  la-bas.  Beaucoup  des 
notres  sont  de  tres  bonnes  families,  mais  en  Irlande 
rignorance  et  terrible,  et  on  veut  le  faire  plus  grand 
avec  une  Universite  ! 

En  esperant  que  la  France  redeviendra  son  vrai 
memet  ce  que  je  crains  etre  impossible,  je  reste,  mon 
cher  ami  (et  Monsieur)  votre  ami  sincere,  agriez  mes 
vcEux  presses,  tout-a-toi. 

JosuE  Lambkin. 

*  M.  de  Bissac  was  a  Catholic,  but  one  of  the  most  liberal 
temper.  He  respected  the  Pope,  but  said  that  he  was  led 
astray  by  his  advisers.  He  voted  every  year  for  the  suppres- 
sion of  public  worship  in  France  and  the  turning  of  the 
churches  into  local  museums.  He  was  in  every  way  remark- 
ably unprejudiced  for  a  man  of  that  persuasion.  His  in- 
defatigable attacks  upon  the  clergy  of  his  country  have  earned 
him  the  admiration  of  part  of  the  whole  civilized  world. 

t  The  phrase  is  "  return  to  her  true  self."  It  was  a 
favourite  one  of  Lambkin's,  but  is  I  fear  untranslatable.  The 
French  have  no  such  subtle  ideas.  The  whole  sentence  was 
left  out  in  the  Horreur ,  and  the  final  paragraph  began  with 
"  Je  reste." 


XVI 

INTERVIEW  WITH  MR.  LAMBKIN 

A  REPRESENTATIVE  of  The  J.  C.  R.  had,  but  a  short 
while  before  his  death,  the  privilege  of  an  interview 
with  Mr.  Lambkin  on  those  numerous  questions  of  the 
day  which  the  enterprise  of  the  Press  puts  before  its 
readers.  The  meeting  has  a  most  pathetic  interest  ! 
Here  was  the  old  man  full  and  portly,  much  alive  to 
current  questions,  and  to  the  last  a  true  representative  of 
his  class.  Within  a  week  the  fatal  Gaudy  had  passed 
and  he  was  no  more  !  Though  the  words  here  given  are 
reported  by  another,  they  bear  the  full,  fresh  impress 
of  his  personality  and  I  treasure  them  as  the  last 
authentic  expression  of  that  great  mind. 

"  Ringing  the  bell  "  (writes  our  representative)  "  at  a 
neat  villa  in  the  Banbury  Road,  the  door  was  answered 
by  a  trim  serving-maid  in  a  chintz  gown  and  with  a  white 
cap  on  her  head.  The  whole  aspect  of  Mr.  Lambkin's 
household  without  and  within  breathes  repose  and  decent 
merriment.  I  was  ushered  into  a  well-ordered  study, 
and  noticed  upon  the  walls  a  few  handsome  prints, 
chosen  in  perfect  taste  and  solidly  mounted  in  fine 
frames,  '  The  meeting  of  Wellington  and  Blucher  at 
Waterloo,'  '  John  Knox  preaching  before  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots,'  'The  trial  of  Lord  William  Russell,'  and 
two  charming  pictures  of  a  child  and  a  dog  :  '  Can  'oo 

266 


INTERVIEW    WITH    MR.    LAMBKIN     267 

talk?'  and  'Me  too!'  completed  the  little  gallery.  I 
noticed  also  a  fine  photograph  of  the  Marquis  of 
Llanidloes,  whose  legal  attainments  and  philological 
studies  had  formed  a  close  bond  between  him  and  Mr. 
Lami.kin.  A  faded  daguerreotype  of  Mr.  Lambkin's 
mother  and  a  pencil  sketch  of  his  father's  country  seat 
possessed  a  pathetic  interest. 

"  Mr.  Lambkin  came  cheerily  into  the  room,  and  I 
plunged  at  once  '  in  medias  res.' 

"  '  Pray  Mr.  Lambkin,  what  do  you  think  of  the 
present  position  of  parties?' 

"  '  Why,  if  you  ask  me,'  he  replied,  with  an  intelli- 
gent look,  '  I  think  the  great  party  system  needs  an 
opposition  to  maintain  it  in  order,  and  I  regret  the 
absence  of  any  man  of  weight  or  talent — I  had  almost 
said  of  common  decency — on  the  Liberal  side.  The 
late  Lord  Llanidloes — who  was  the  old  type  of  Liberal 
— such  a  noble  heart  ! — said  to  me  in  this  very  room, 
"  Mark  my  words,  Lambkin  "  (said  he)  "■  the  Of -position 
is  doomed.'"  '  This  was  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  1885  Parlia- 
ment; it  has  always  seemed  to  me  a  wonderful  prophecy. 
But  Llanidloes  was  a  wonderful  man,  and  the  place  of 
second  Under-Secretary  for  Agriculture  was  all  too  little 
a  reward  for  such  services  as  his  to  the  State.  '  Do 
you  know  those  lines,'  here  Mr.  Lambkin  grew  visibly 
affected,  '  "  Then  all  were  for  the  party  and  none  were 
for  the  State,  the  rich  man  paid  the  poor  man,  and  the 
weak  man  loved  the  great"?  I  fear  those  times  will 
never  come  again.' 

"A  profound  silence  followed.  'However,'  con- 
tinued he  with  quiet  emphasis,  '  Home  Rule  is  dead, 
and  thejre  is  no  immediate  danger  of  any  tampering  with 


268  LAMBKIN'S   REMAINS 

the  judicial  system  of  Great  Britain  after  the  fashion 
that  obtains  in  France. 

"  *  Yes,'  he  continued,  with  the  smile  that  makes  him 
so  familiar,  '  these  are  my  books  :  trifles — but  my  own. 
Here  '  (taking  down  a  volume),  '  is  What  would  Crom- 
well have  done? — a  proposal  for  reforming  Oxford. 
Then  here,  in  a  binding  with  purple  flowers,  is  my 
Time  and  Purpose — a  devotional  book  which  has  sold 
largely.  The  rest  of  the  shelf  is  what  I  call  my 
"casual"  work.  It  was  mainly  done  for  that  great 
modern  publisher — Matthew  Straight,  who  knows  so 
well  how  to  combine  the  old  Spirit  with  Modern 
exigencies.  You  know  his  beautiful  sign  of  the  Boiling 
Pot  in  Plummer's  Court?  It  was  painted  for  him  by 
one  of  his  young  artists.  You  have  doubtless  seen  his 
name  in  the  lists  of  guests  at  country  houses ;  I  often 
meet  him  Avhen  I  go  to  visit  my  friends,  and  we  plan  a 
book  together. 

"  *  Thus  my  Boys  of  Great  Britain — an  historical 
work,  was  conceived  over  the  excellent  port  of  Baron 
Gusmann  at  Westburton  Abbey.  Then  there  is  the 
expansion  of  this  book,  English  Boyhood,  in  three 
volumes,  of  which  only  two  have  appeared — Anglo- 
Saxon  Boyhood  and  Mediceval  Boyhood  in  England . 
It  is  very  laborious. 

"  '  No,'  he  resumed,  with  nervous  rapidity,  'I  have 
not  confined  myself  to  these.  There  is  What  is  Will? 
Mehitopel  the  Jewess  of  Prague  (a  social  novel) ;  The 
Upper  House  of  Convocation  before  History ;  Elements 
of  the  Leibnitzian  Monodology  for  Schools  (which  is 
the  third  volume  in  the  High  School  Series) ;  Physiology 
of  the  Elephant  and  its  little  abbreviated  form  for  the 


INTERVIEW    WITH    MR.    LAMBKIN     269 

use  of  children — How  Jumbo  is  made  Inside — dedicated 
by  the  way,  to  that  dear  little  fairy,  Lady  Constantia 
de  la  Pole  :  such  a  charming  child,  and  destined,  I  am 
sure,  to  be  a  good  and  beautiful  woman.  She  is  three 
years  old,  and  shooting  up  like  a  graceful  young  lily.' 

"  '  I  fear  I  am  detaining  you,'  I  said,  as  the  good 
man,  whose  eyes  had  filled  with  tears  during  the  last 
remark  (he  is  a  great  lover  of  children)  pulled  out  a 
gold  watch  and  consulted  its  tell-tale  dial.  '  Not  at 
all,'  he  replied  with  finished  courtesy,  'but  I  always 
make  a  point  of  going  in  to  High  Tea  and  seeing  my 
wife  and  family  well  under  weigh  before  I  go  off  to 
Hall.  Surely  that  must  be  the  gong,  and  there  '  (as  the 
pleasant  sound  of  children's  high  yoices  filled  the 
house)  '  come  what  I  call  my  young  barbarians.' 

"  He  accompanied  me  to  the  door  with  true  old- 
world  politeness  and  shook  me  beautifully  by  the  hand. 
'  Good-bye,'  he  said,  'Good-bye  and  God-speed.  You 
may  make  what  use  you  like  of  this,  that  I  believe  the 
task  of  the  journalist  to  be  among  the  noblest  in  our 
broad  land.  The  Press  has  a  great  mission,  a  great 
mission.' 

"  With  these  words  still  ringing  in  my  ears  I  gathered 
up  my  skirts  to  cross  the  muddy  roadway  and  stepped 
into  the  tram." 


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